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RUDOLPH
BULTMANN
AN INTRODUCTORY
INTERPRETATION
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RUDOLPH BULTMANN
An Introductory Interpretation
John Webster
@ John Webster
Published by:
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PREFACE
This booklet has a two-fold aim: to offer an account of
the overall features of Bultmann's theology, and to give a
critique of some of the major trends in his thinking.
Most students get their first taste of Bultmann in the
sphere of New Testament studies, either at first hand through
his commentaries or historical work on the New Testament back-
ground, or - more likely - through lectures and books of
those influenced by Bultman: Conzelmann, Hahn, Fuller, Perrin.
Given this, it may seem odd that I give a good deal of space
to seemingly abstract theological and philosophical issues.
But I do so because Bultmann's work on the New Testament -
crucially, of course, his programme of 'demythologising' -
cannot be understood at all adequately without reference to
his existentialism. Failure to grasp this leaves a lot bf
students in the dark about what Bultmann is doing. This
difficulty could be met by an awareness of the larger, theo-
logical issues with which Bultmann is dealing, undercutting
what has often been an unthinking condemnation of his work by
those Tllho have not properly understood what it is trying to
do.
The importance of Bultmann's work for anyone reading
and thinking about theology in the current climate lies not
simply in the sheer volume of his writings, but in the
rigour with which he pursues his inslghts and the consistency
which he displays in applying them to many different fields.
Bultmann was a rare example of a deeply reflective mind
coupled with a phenomenal spread of knowledge, not only
about the New Testament and its Jewlsh and Hellenistic back-
ground, but also about classical studies, literature, phil-
osophy and cultural history. One thing that it is easy to
overlook is that in reading his work (and not those of
his critics!), we are in the presence of something profound.
Bultmann is one of the handful of great theologians of
the century: a New Testament critic and historian without peer,
an outstanding philosopher and historian of ideas, above
all, a thorough-going thinker, whose convictions brought him
the censure, not only of tHe Nazis, but also of the officials
of the church. There can be little doubt that Bultmann res-
tored to Christian theology some of the emphases which
liberalism had previously obscuredJ but equally, there can
be little doubt that he often pointed theology along a 'IIrong
path. Because of this, Bultmann is to be criticised - but
the first step to criticism must be understanding what he
says. Which is where we begin.
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INTRODUCTION
Bultmann's life was of a singularly academic nature,
and can be recounted simply. Born in Germany in 1884, he
spent his school years laying the foundations of what was
to become a quite extraordinary erudition. He studied
theology with some of the great representatives of German
liberalism - Gunkel and Harnack in Berlin, Julicher, Weiss
and Herrmann in Marburg. It was at Marburg that his teaching
career began in 1912, as lecturer in New Testament, and
where, apart from a brief spell, he was Professor of New
'restament from 1921 until his retirement in 1951. He died
in 1976.
It is more than a matter of historical curiosity to look
at the background of Bultmann's work. This is because theo-
logy does not take place in a vacuum: indeed, very often one
of the keys to understanding the work of a theologian may
be an appreciation of the personal or extrapersonal circum-
stances in which his work took place. And this is true even
of critical study of the New Testament text. Often exegesis
of the Bible is presented as a neutral, purely scientific
discipline, in which personal and historical prejudices are
suspended in the interests of objectivity. In fact, biblical
exegesis is a very sensitive guage of the presuppositions
with which theologians work - as we can see easily be comp-
aring a Reformation commentary such as Luther's on Galatians
with modern lectures or commentaries on the same epistle.
Theology always takes place in a specific context: in the
case of Bultmann, too, a good deal of what he has to say
reflects the concerns of his era.
To fill in a little of the background. Bultmann was
very decisively influenced by liberalism, the dominant
theological school in Germany at the beginning of the century,
when he received his theological training. Indeed, until
the early 1920's, Bultmann saw himself as very much within
the liberal tradition. That tradition has been very aptly
called 'culture Protestantism' - liberal theologians, that
is, tended to see the Christian gospel as harmonious with,
and as the fulfilment of, all the great human civilised
values: love, toleration, peace, freedom, self-sacrifice,
goodness. In a classic liberal text such as Harnack's book
What is Christianity? (1900), the essential points of the
gospel were summarIsed as the fatherhood of God, the brother-
hood of man, and the infinite value of the human soul.
Christianity was thus given a predominantly-ethical inter-
pretation: Jesus, in the eyes of the great lIberal thinkers,
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was almost more of a dispenser of general moral maxims than
a divine Saviour. Whilst it is important to recognise that
very rarely is justice done to this older liberal theology -
indeed, that it is almost never read - it is difficult to
escape the feeling that in the tradition from Schleiermacher,
the 'father of liberalism', to Harnack, major components of
the Christian gospel were either excluded or interpreted in
a way which failed to do justice to the breadth of Christian
truth.
At the beginning of the 1920's, Bultmann, like Karl Barth,
came to reject this liberal heritage; turning his back deci-
sively on it, he became associated with what was then known as
'dialectical' or 'neo-orthodox' theology. Bultmann came to
see that liberalism had made the Christian gospel into little
more than the religious counterpart of humanistic European
civilisation - a civilisation whose emptiness had been
tragically exposed by the events of 1914-18. Liberal theology
had ceased to take God seriously; its talk was of man and
man's religion or man's ethics. Bultmann came to see that in
the New Testament gospel, God and man are not partners in the
building of a Christian culture: they are at war.
An excellent example of the direction of Bultmann's
thought in this new departure would be his interpretation
of the concept of the Kingdom of God. A liberal theologian
like Albrecht Ritschl (1822-1889) interpreted the Kingdom of
God in primarily ethical and humanistic terms: the Kingdom
is something which men do, it is the organization of humanity
through action inspIred of love. Bultmann completely rejects
this ethical view of the Kingdom, since it fails to appreciate
the distinction between God and man which the Kingdom pre-
supposes. He writes in his book Jesus and the Word, which
first appeared in Germany in 1926, that the KIngdom of God
means 'deliverance for men. It is that eschatological
deliverance which ends everything earthly' (p.33), and he
adds that 'This deliverance confronts man as an Either-Or'
(ibid). The Kingdom is thus not, as the liberals thought,
the culmination of all that men consider good: it is 'wholly
supernatural' (p.34), opposed to man and his ethical concerns.
"The Kingdom of God . is something miraculous, in fact, the
absolute miracle, opposed to all here and now; it is "wholly
other", heavenly' (p.34).
But alongside this emphasis on the aspects of the Christian
gospel to which liberalism had failed to give due weight, there
coexists Bultmann's highly critical stance towards the
task of reading the New Testament text. Indeed in approaching
the study of the Bible, Bultmann continued to use highly
refined versions of the tools which had first been fashioned
by the very liberals he was rejecting. Later on we will look
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more closely at this important area of the relation between
critical use of the Bible and his theological
for the present, we need only note that precisely at the
time in which Bu1tmann was coming to question the liberal
tradi tion, he published The Histo'ryof' the synoEtic Tradition
(1921) - the classic text of form-crItIcIsm. T Is bOok
anaiyses the various literary forms of the accounts of the
ministry of Jesus in the synoptic gospels (miracle stories,
controversy sayings, prophetic uterances, parables, etc.),
and seeks to show how these forms have been radically
altered, and often created, by the activity of the early
church. The conclusion from the book is that the synoptic
accounts of Jesus are-almost useless as an historical record.
The context, then, in which Bultrnann's theology is to be
set, is two-fold. There is his radically critical approach
to the reliability of the New Testament as an historical
record: and there is his equally strong stress on the
unfashionable aspects of the Christian gospel. It is a
curious mix, which we cannot explain away easily as in-
consistency, and which requires careful study before we
pronounce judgement. The way in to understanding is a
consideration of the word which more than any other has become
inseparably lihked with Bultrnann - demytho10gising.
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1. EXPOSITION
Bultmann's Theological Programme
What does it mean to 'demythologise' the New Testament?
In summary form, Bultmann's answer might run something
like this: to demythologise is to realise that the message
of the New Testament does not rest in the 'mythological'
externals, but in its 'kerygmatic' core. In order to
elucidate this, we start with the two notions 'myth'
and ' kerygma '
1. Kerygma and Myth
Bultmann's analysis of the New Testament is made
up of two components: kerygma and myth. To start with
the latter: Bultmann defines myth thus: 'Mythology is the
use of imagery to express the otherworldly in terms
of this world and the divine in terms of human life,
the other side in terms of this side. For instance,
divine transcendence is expressed as spatial distance'
CH W ed, KerYlma and Myth I, p. 10). And the New
Testament message Is y and large expressed in these
mythological terms. As examples, we might adduce the ideas
'of Christ as Second Adam or Messiah or Son of Godl. the Virgin
Birth or the Second Comingl the interpretation of the death
of Christ as a sacrificial atonement - all of these ways of
speaking are mythological, since they speak of divine realities
in terms borrowed from the human realm. At the outset, it
must be understood that Bultmann does not mean that because
these ideas are mythological they are untrue. Of course, they
are untrue if they are taken at their level: for example,
Christ will not come again on the of heaven, as the
Thessalonian epistles maintain. But these myths are true
when they are properly understood, not in and fortnemselves,
but as expressions of the message underneath the myth. The
meaning of the New Testament text is not to be found in
its external, mythological shell, which is the outdated
cosmology of primitive Palestinian and Hellenistic communities,
but in the kernel, which is the kerygma.
By the 'kerygma', Bultmann means the essential message
of the New Testament for today, once that has been extracted
from its mythological setting. The extraction is the work of
the process of demytholgising, which is thus the method
whereby we interpret the inner meaning of the mythological
statements we find in the New Testament.
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The relationship between the mythology of the New Testament
and its kerygmatic meaning we have already described as that
between the kernel and the shell: in order to get to the
kernel, we have to get througb its outer casing.. What Bultmann
is dOing here is very close to what some of the church
fathers did in trying to use the Old Testament. Taking
a start from Origen (185-254), many of the church fathers
read the historical portions of the Old Testament as
allegories - as stories whose meaning lies not in the
'surface' text, but in the hidden message which they
exemplify or illustrate. Gregory of Nyssa (330-95), for
example, in his Life of Moses, interprets Moses' ascent of
Sinai in Exodus 19 as underneath a story about the ascent
of the soul to God. So Bultmann: to discover the real
meaning of the New Testament we look beneath the plain,
surface meaning to the hidden kerygma.
For Bultmann, then, demythologising is a positive,
not a negative approach to the New Testament . In his essay
in Kerygma and Myth I, entitled 'New Testament and Mythology',
Bultmann Is at paIns to emphasise that he is not jettisoning
the message of the New Testament because he finds it un-
acceptable, but rather he is seeking to find out what is the
real meaning of that message. In this he distinguishes
himself from the older liberals like Harnack who simply
pruned the gospel of those elements which the modern world-
view found hard to take. Bultmann does not want to reduce
but to interpret - to get to the real message, to the real
stumbling-block.
We must keep this firmly in mind when we try to understand
the reasons for demythologising. It ought at the outset
to be saId that Bultmann's aim is not apologetic - he is
not trying to make the Christian gospel acceptable before
the court of human reason. His aim is rather declaratory -
making known what the content of the Christian faith is.
Hence it is not true, as is often asserted, that Bultmann
introduced the demythologising programme into theology
because the scientific outlook of modern man had made the
plain meaning of the New Testament text impossible to
accept. It is of course true that for Bultmann 'modern
science does not believe that the course of nature can
be interrupted or, so to speak, perforated, by supernatural
powers' (Jesus Christ and p. 15) - and hence that
mythological Ideas of thelvlnentrusion into the natural
realm are not open to modern man. But this modern scientific
outlook only serves to show that the real meaning of the
New Testament never did rest in its mythology, but in the
kerygma: 'To demythologise is to deny that the message of
Scripture is bound to an ancient world-view which is obsolete'
(op. cit, p. 36). Bultmann does not demythologise in order to
make the Christian faith easier or more acceptable to modern
man.
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Two other reasons for demythologising are more accurate
accounts of wnat Bultmann is aiming to do. First, he claims
the the New Testament itself begins the process of demythol-
ogising. Paul, for example, demytho10gises the primitive
Palestinian eschatology by speaking (in Ga1atians 4.4) of the
future as already inaugurated. John especially reinterprets
the future references in eschatology by making the future
judgement a matter of the here and now, and by seeing
the earthly work of Jesus as the eschatologica1 event which
more primitive traditions put in the future. In other
words, within the New Testament itself there is the pre-
cedent for demytho1ogising.
Witn the second, futher reason we are taken to the
heart of what Bu1tmann has to say about the New Testament.
The reason is this: demythologisingis necessary because
mythology speaks of God and man in an illegitimate way.
Mythology speaks of God, for example, as a worldly object
'out there' like any other object - whereas for the kerygma
of the New Testament, God is a matter of personal concern.
It is this - existentialist - starting-point which offers
the clue to what Bu1trnann is doing when he interprets
the mythology of the New Testament in terms of its under-
lying 'kerygmatic' message. Before looking at the point
more closely, however, it may be worthwhile to summarise
so far by means of the following propositions:
1. The New Testament is composed of kerygma and myth.
2. Myth is the external form of the New Testament.
3. The kerygma is its internal content.
4. We extract the kerygma from the myth by demytho1ogising.
5. Dernythologising is not destructive: it is demanded by
the New Testament.
2. Existentialism.
At the end of the previous section we suggested that
the fundamental reason for demytho10gising the New Testament
is that mythology speaks in an illegitimate way. What this
means is that Bu1tmann's question about how to interpret the
mythology of the New Testament is at heart a question about
the proper way of speaking about God and man. To understand
the kind of issues about which this question inquires,
and especially, to understand Bu1tmann's answer to the
question, we need to do a little orienteering in the field
of existentialism: once that has been done, the territory
should be a little clearer and we should be able to appreciate
more of the drift of Bu1trnann's thought.
When Bu1tmann was first a professor at Marburg in the
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1920's, his colleague in the department. of philosophy was
Martin Heide9ger, one of the leading representatives of what
has came to be known as existentialism. Heidegger's thinking
is complex in the extreme, for not only does it treat highly
abstract philosophical issues, but it treats them in a manner
which even to the trained philosopher is at first sight simply
baffling, and which demands a great deal of anyone seeking to
llnderstand him. partly this is because of the entirely
novel set of concepts and words which Heidegger invents to ex-
press his thought. Some consideration of Heidegger is,
however, essential to those wishing to understand Bultmann.
For a much fuller account of the relation than we
can give in this present context, the reader is referred
to Professor John Macquarrie's excellent study An Existent-
ialist Theoloqy.
The meeting of Bultmann and Heidegger at Marburg between
the years 1923 and 1928 was one of the intellectual events
of the century. For Bultmann, the philosophy of Heidegger
offered nothing less than a new insight into the heart of
the kerygma of the New Testament. In addition, Heidegger
provided Bultmann with the stock of concepts whereby he
could express his interpretation of the real meaning of
that kerygma. What was it, then, that Bultmann found so
stimulating in Heidegger's thought, especially as it is
found expressed in his book Being . and Time, which first
appeared in Germany in 19271
In order to begin to answer ttiat question it may be helpful
to give a brief map of the territory of existentialism for the
less familiar. A roughly constituted philosophical school,
existentialism is to a large extent a 20th century phenomenon,
although its roots lie in such 19th century thinkers as
Kierkegaard, Dostoyevsky and Nietzsche. Amongst its major
representatives are Jaspers and Heidegger in Germany, and Sartre
and Camus in France. EXistentialism has been of less influence
in England, particularly in academic circles where logical
and linguistic matters have been the staple philosophical
diet for most of the century. Indeed, existentialism is not
really an 'academic' movement: by definition, its concern is
with reflecting on human existence and human action. Of
course, this is not to say that it has not produced serious
works: Heidegger's Being and Time and Sartre's
books Being and Nothintness and critique 01 Dialectical Reason
are likely to become p Ilosophical classIcs. But exIstentIal-
ism is by no means exclusively an academic affair: it has
strong literary connections: both Sartre and Camus are major
novelists and playwrights. And it has a political concern,
as might be expected from a view of life which puts such
a stress on human action.
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Put very Qaldly, the common theme or way of approach
which unifies all the diverse aspects of existentialism
might be stated thus: 'Existence precedes essence' (Sartre).
What, we may ask with justice, does that mean, and how does
it have the remotest connection Vith the New Testament gospel?
In order to grasp the concerns of eXistentialism, we look at
one specific issue to which existentialist thinkers have con-
stantly returned: what is man? In looking at the w?y in which
Heidegger answers that question, we shall hopefully be able
to discover some of the main themes of existentialism, and then
move on to see the use made of them by Bultmann in interpreting
the Christian faith for today.
When Heidegger asks the question 'What is man?', the most
important word in the question is the verb: 'What is man?'.
That is to say, he asks about the fact that man man's
'being', about the 'is-ness' of man. Put technically, his
concern is to inquire after what it means to attribute 'being'
to man. When we ask 'Whah is man?', what do we mean by 'is'?
At first sight that may seem a pointless question - do we not
all know what we mean when we say the word 'is'? But on closer
inspection the question is very fruitful: one of Heidegger's
major concerns has been to show that there are many different
answers to the 'question about being', especially when we ask
it in the form 'What is man?'
These answers can be put into roughly two groups. The
first answer or group of answers is predominantly that given
by the Greek philosophers Plato and Aristotle, but followed,
with modifications, until the end of the 19th century. This
answer sees man in primarily static terms. A good example
of what is meant here would be the way we talk about human
nature. In talking this way of man we suggest that man's being
Is something fixed, something constant, something universal
which obtains everywhere. According to this picture of man,
a man is his nature, and this nature can be described in ternls
of some-of its unvarying characteristics - man is SOCial, he
is rational, he makes tools, he possesses the gift of language,
he is religious. All these qualities are seen as the constants
of man's nature. In other words, this picture of man defines
man by what he is essentially. To invert the words from Sartre,
'Essence precedes exIstence'.
To give a concrete example, we might look at Plato's idea
of man. For plato, there is a difference between what man is
outwardly, and what he is inwardly. Man's outer life - his
external action, his existence - is less important than his
inner life. And if we wish to inquire what man really is, we
do not look to the external existence, but to the essential
part of man, the inner life of which the external action is
only a shadow of little real importance. plato is a good
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example of this first picture of man: man has a fixed nature
which he inherits as and parcel of being human. It is a
definition of man which is essentially static.
The second answer to the question 'What is man?' is that
offered by Heidegger himself. He reverses the direction of
Plato's thought by stressing 'existence' over 'essence'.
What is most important about man is his external existence,
and not some supposed eternally static, fixed and preprogrammed
nature which he possesses in virtue of being a man. Man
makes himself. By that Heidegger means to say that man's
'being' is created every time man engages in an act of
exisitng. It is man's actions, man's concrete life in the
present which makes his being into what it is. To take
a specific example, we might ask what it means to say that
'man is free'. On the first, static model of man, man's
freedom would be an attribute which he has because he is
a man, and which he would then exercise in specific acts
of freedom. But for the second, more dynamic picture of
man, man's freedom can only be derived from specific acts
of freedom. Man is free only as he acts freely. It is
a man's acts whico-determine his being.
Because of this, Heidegger places great weight on the
notion of decision. Because man is not fixed, as the Greeks
and later maintained, but must make himself, then
what he does matters. The all-important thing about a man
is his acts. For Heidegger, the most important act is
the act of decision. By deciding, we become ourselves.
Deciding is the way of self-realisation, of making ourselves
into ourselves, because in deciding, we choose between
one thing and another and thus decide to be something
specific. Put tersely: man is his decisions about himself.
According to the first picture of man, man's decisions are
determined by what he essentially is - a man chooses to
be free because he is free. Heidegger once again reverses
the direction: a man is free because he chooses to be free.
This leads to the distinction which Heidegger makes
between 'authentic' and 'inauthentic' existence. This very
odd-sounding way of talking about man follows on simply
from what we have said about the contrasts between the two
pictures of man 'Inauthentic' existence is existence which
runs away from making decisions. If it is true, as Heidegger
proposes, that man becomes himself by deciding, then the
refusal to decide is the refusal to exist properly as a man.
A man is his decisions, he Comes to be in specific acts of
choice. The refusal to decide may take many forms: it may
be clinging to one specific way of acting in the face of the
demand to change, it may be keeping the world and all its
threats and questions at a distance, avoiding the need to
respond, crucially, for Heidegger, it can be the refusal to face
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up to the fact that all men will one day die. All these
are examples of running away from decision, of clinging
to security rather than running the risk of exposure to
choice. And that means running away from 'authentic'
existence.
For authentic existence accepts the exposure to the
demand to decide - and in so doing, becomes proper existence.
If Inauthentic existence is not being yourself, authentic
existence is being yourself, since your self is your decisions
about yourself. Descartes' famous dictum whicn provided
the starting-point for the whole of his philosophy was 'Cogito,
ergo sum' - 'I think, therefore I am'. For Heidegger the
equi valent might be 'I decide, therefore I am'. Or to put
it another way: on the first picture of man, man's being (the
'is' of the question 'What is man?') is a quality which he
possesses; on Heidegger's picture man's being is an event,
something which happens when man decides to exist in-an--
authentic manner.
What is the relation of all this to Bultmann's interpre-
tation of the New Testament?
3. An Existentialist Interpretation of the New Testament.
From our brief look at Heidegger, it should by now
be a little clearer what the statement 'existence precedes
essence' means. The specific example of the way Heidegger
talks about man sought to show that man's 'being' is
to be discovered in actual moments of existing, in man's
acts, rather than in some 'essential human nature'. It is
precisely this which Bultmann seizes upon. For him, Heidegger's
existentialism is nothing other than a rediscovery of the
message of the New Testament kerygma. It thus offers not
only a possible, but a necessary means of interpreting the
Christian gospel. This - and not, as is often said, an unwilling-
ness or inability to accept the surface meaning of the New
Testament - is the fundamental motive at work in the programme
of demythologising.
We said earlier that Bultmann's basic problem with the
mythology of the New Testament is that it speaks of God
and man in an illegitimate way. We can explain the point
he is trying to make here by distinguishing, as Bultmann
does, between 'objectifying' and 'non-objectifying' language.
'Objectifying' language speaks about its subject-Inatter
as it were at one remove. Itspeaksfrornoutside:
disinterestedly, without any real engagement with the subJect-
matter. That is why it is called 'objectifying' language: it
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makes the matter of which it speaks into an object 'out t h e r e ~ ~
so to speak, an object which is apart from us and which does
not touch our inmost being.
The opposite of this is 'non-objectifying' language.
This way of speaking talks about its subject-matter from
within personalconcern. The things of which it speaKS"'are
seen as matters touchIng the very existence of the speaker
- they are matters of urgent concern, and so cannot be spoken
about in a way which keeps them at a distance: the subject-
matter is thus no longer an object 'out there', but something
which cuts into my existence in the present.
When we come to look at the actual shape of what Bultmann
sees as the central message of the New Testament, we shall be
able to give some concrete examples of the distinction between
'objectifying' and 'non-objectifying' language as applied to
God; but some initial unclarity may be cleared up by a couple of
non-t.heological examples. The first, rather trivial, would
be the way we would describe a hammer. 'Objectifying' language
would describe its constituent parts, its materials, its shape,
Size, weight and so forth: but we would never get to the real
pOint if we failed to go on to describe the hammer as something
to he llsed by us in accomplishing certain specific tasks. This
latter description would be non-objectifying. A more sober
example: we could speak of death in objectifying terms by
describing the clinical processes involved; but non-objectifying
language about death would treat it as a matter which involved
me personally - as one bereaved, as one fearing his own death.
To speak adequately of death, we cannot speak about it without
bringing our own existence into the centre of concern.
For Bultmann, the problem with mythology is that it is
objectifying language. A mythological way of speaking holds
matters of concern at one remove, it speaks about them from.
a safe distance. And this is precisely why the mythology of
the New Testament has to be interpreted if the underlying
kerygmatic message is-to emerge. The mythology is 'objectifying':
the kerygma is non-objectifying. Bultmann writes in his
essay 'New Testament and Mythology' that 'Myth should be
interpreted not cosmologically, but anthropologically, or
better still, eXistentially' (p. 10); and he goes on to say
this: the importance of the New Testament mythology lies
not in its imagery but in the understanding of existence which
it enshrines' (p. 11).
From this perspective, we can begin to see why Bultmann
I
wants to interpret the. mythology of the New Testament writers.
Demythologising is not a destructive process, not. the jettison-
ing of certain elements of the Christian gospel be.cause modern
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m&n cannot believe them. Rather, it is the way of getting
to the heart ot what the New Testament has always said and
still says; for the matters of which it speaks are not
abstract issues of which we may speak with impartial "
detachments they are matters of existential concern. Our
next task is to take a look at some of the results of
this sort of interpretation by examining some of the major
themes which Bultmann treats.
a. Bultmann's Method
From what we have said so far, it should be clear
that Bultmann's existentialism leads him to interpret
the message of the New Testament in non-objectifying terms
- in terms which seek to express that message as a matter of
personal concern in the practical business of making decisions
about our existence. In his little book Jesus and the Word,
he writes that his fundamental way of approachIng the mythology
of the New Testament is to look underneath the mythology for
the 'conception of man which in the last analysis underlies
it' (p. 47). And that phrase could serve as a neat summary
of the way in which Bultmann sets about the task of interpreting
the gospel message. He makes the same point in his book
Primitive Christianity in "its Contemporary Setting, when he
says that what the bOok aims to gIve Is an Interpretation
of the 'understanding of human existence' (p. 12) in the
early Christian gospel.
There are two consequences of this method which we ought
to take a look at before we go on to see the concrete results
of the method. The first is that it lends a certain urgency
to all Bultmann's writings (the exception being the highly
technical approach of The Histortof "the Synoptic Tradition).
Bultmann, that is, does not see Is work as exclusIvely an
academic affair, an abstract exerdise with very little to
say to the practical concerns of the life of faith. The things
which he treats are matters demanding decision, cutting to
the marrow of human existence. Hence the earnestness of
Bultmann's prose style is not simply a matter of literary
taste: it points to how he sees his task as a theologian.
The second consequence, of greater importance, is that
'anthropology' becomes the main concern of all theological
statements. By anthropology we do not of course mean the
scientific study of (usually primitive) civilisations, but
something much more general - the study or view of man (in
the sense, that is, in which we use the word in the phrase
'theological anthropology'). Bultmann, we saw earlier, lnter-
prets all mythological statements, such as those we find in
the New Testament, in terms of the view of man which underlies
them. That is to say, he interprets them anthropologically.
-13-
11
And more than this; all theological statements are interpreted
anthropologically or existentially. A good example of
this is the section onthe.theologyof Paul in the first
volume of his NeW' Testalnent Theology. In his preliminary
remarks, he says that 'paullne theology is not a speculative
system. It deals with God not as he is in himself but only
with God as he is significant for man, for man's responsibility
and man's salvation' (pp. 190f). And he goes on to say 'For
this reason and in this sense Paul's theology is, at the
same time, anthropology' (p. 191). The exposition of Paul
which follows these remarks bears out the line of approach,
as it divides the whole of Paul's thought into reflections
on man prior to the revelation of faith and on man under
faith. Theological statements have significance only insofar
as they refer to man's existence now.
Bultmann takes this point further when he rejects the
idea of 'general truths' as applied to the Christian gospel.
By a 'general truth' he means much the same thing as an
objectifying statement: a statement which remains meaningful
independent of any 'existential significance' it might have
for men. The Christian kerygma does not speak in a general
way at all - it speaks existentially, for the here and now.
A couple of examples will show that his rejection of 'general
truths' is an important component in his method of approaching
the New Testament.
First, the example of ethics. For Bultmann, the New
Testament does not present us with general moral principles,
but with concrete demands to act in specific ways in specific
situations (this, indeed, was one of the main areas of
disagreement between Jesus and contemporary legalistic
Judaism). For general moral principles can only be regarded
with the attitude of the spectator, and not with that of one
actively involved in getting on with the job. When we talk
about the ethical demands of the gospel, those demands must
be seen as particular and actual - they cannot be deduced
from general moral truths. Bultmann writes: 'The crisis
of decision is the situation in which all observation is
excluded, for which NOw alone has meaning, which is wholly
absorbed in the present moment. . Now must man know what to
do and have undone, and no the past or the
universal is available. That is the meaning of decision'
(Jesus and the Word, p. 6ar.- To give an example: the
commandment to love one's neighbour in the New Testament
is not a general moral principle; it is meaningless apart
from the concrete situation of man's being in community with
other men. To put it formally: ethics are existential.
The second example of the rejection of general truths is
-14-
Bultmann's of miracles. According to him,
we do not believe in miracles in the SaIlle way that we believe
in the theory of relativity - as things which may, indeed,
take place, but which do not affect our existence. Miracles
are only meaningful if they affect us now. He writes that
'If Jesus' belief in miracles is understood as a general
conv.i.ction that certain happenings, which we today are
accustomed to attribute to natural causes, depend upon
some higher, divine cause, then the b9lief is understood
as the expression of the faith that God's will is not in
general visible but reveals itself in special and particular
events, then it belongs of necessity to his idea of God'
(Jesus and the Word,p. 127). We do not believe in 'miracles
in general': such a belief has no meaning unless it is under-
neath an expression of actual encounters between God and man.
These two examples show well what we mean by existential
interpretation at work. Closely connected with this is
another aspect of Bultamnn's method which has received a
good deal of attention in recent years. This aspect we
could describe by using the title of an essay by Bultmann
first published in 1957: 'Is Exegesis without Presuppositions
Possible?' (the English translation is to be found in his
collection Existence and Faith).
It is commonplace in exegetical work on the Bible - or,
indeed, in any other sphere of historical investigation -
to regard the work we do in a purely detached, scientific
manner. It is not the task of the investigator to bring
his personality into the matter (hence dull commentaries!):
his personal:and extra-personal circumstances should,
indeed, be suspended, lest they be allowed to influence the
account which he gives of the object of his investigation.
Thus, for example, in presenting what the New Testament
has to say about baptism, we should not allow our churchmanship
to colour our account of the Biblical data.
Bultmann, of course, accepts this sort of objectivity as
necessary - though it is a matter of debate whe.ther he is
as impartial as might be wished in presenting some of this
evidence. But there is another sort of objectivity whi.ch
he does reject outright in the essay we have just mentioned.
That sort of objectivity is what we might call anti-existential:
it does not allow the subject-matter to be of personal concern
to the investigator. All we have said so far should make
it clear that it is just this sort of neutral attitude towards
the subject-matter of the New Testament which Bultmann wants
to avoid at all costs. And this is why he claims that
exegesis cannot be without presuppositions - unless it is
done by someone less than human. No-one can read the New
Testament without a sense of its importance as a document
-15-
for him as a person. If we are to encounter what the New
Testament says, we cannot suspend our subjectivity, rather,
we must take that subjectivity to the text and allow it to
be questioned by the message we find there. As Bultmann
puts it in slightly more technical language I presuppositions
are a fruitful way of approaching the text because in order
to understand it, we must stand in a 'life-relation' to it.
To sum up this first aspect of Bultamnn's existentialist
reading of the New Testament: the New Testament is to be
interpreted existentially, by looking for the understanding
of man which is expressed through the mythology. This means
that there we do not have to do with general truths, but with
existential truths - which means the attitude of 'scientific
neutrality' is excluded.
b. The Nature of Man.
We now turn to look at some specific examples of this
method in action. First, the doctrine of man.
From what we have seen of Bultmann so far, especially
in his analYSis of New Testament ethics, it should be evident
that he sees man in existential terms: a man is his acts. He
that ' what a man has dbne and does - his decisions -
constitute him in his true he rs-essentiall* a
temporal being' (Essays, p. 9). Man's essence Is not ing
other than his exIstence in the here and now, in history.
That is why he is a 'temporal' or 'historical' being: he
is never outside time and change.
And this existential definition of man Bultmann traces
to Jesus himself. He writes that ' the nature of a man for
Jesus is not determined by his human quality or the character
of his spiritual life, but simply by the decision the man
makes in the here-and-now of his present life' . (Jesus and
the Word, p. 46), that is 'Only what a man does now gIves
him value' (Ibid). Not only is this truth found in the
(carefully demythologised) teaching of Jesus, it can also
be found in the Old Testament view of man (see Prtmitive
Christianity in its Contemporary Setting, Pt 1, Ch 3) and,
most especially, In the theology of Paul (see Theology of the
New Testa.nent, vol 1, Pt 2).
As a concrete example, we might cite Bultmann's interpret-
ation of what it means for man to be a sinner. Sinfulness is
not a 'state' in which man exists. Alienation from God cannot
be thought in a static way at all, since it is only in specific
acts that a man has being. Bultmann says that 'Sin is
disobedience against the demand of the here and now'
Prtmitive Christianity, p. 58): it is not a state of rebellion
agaInst God, hut acts of A clear instance of this
-16-
view of man is-his analysis of the nature of sin in the Gospel
of John. Bultmann writes that 'When a man commits himself
to fallenness, he surrenders his authentIc possIbIIIty ...
Man is at all times called to decision, to risk himself. The
world rejects such decision - and in the rejection it has al-
ready made the decision and has cut off its existence as
potentiality-to-be is to have a future' (Faith and Understanding,
pp. l70f). To elucidate the rather complex language here:
what Bultmann earlier called 'authentic existence' he calls
here 'potentiality-to-be' - that ability to be open to
decision and thus to be open to make oneself by making
decisions. The result of such openness is having a future
(not in the sense of a temporal future', but rather a 'future
filled with meaning'). Sin cuts itself off from this possibility
of authentic existence, which is only opened up again in faith:
'Only in listening to the revelation of the Word does faith
exist. Only in such listening is the possibility of the future
opened' (Faith and Understanding, p. 179).
c. The Nature of God.
About God as he is in and for himself, we cannot speak,
nor should we wish to do so. One of the major emphases of
the earlier work of Bultmann was on the notion of God as
'Wholly Other': God is not at our disposal, cannot be domest-
icated and brought down to our level. Partly this was
because of his rejection of liberal theology, which he -
along with Karl Barth - believed to have jettisoned the
fact that 'God is other than the world, he is beyond the
world' (Faith and Understanding, p. 40). Like Barth,
Bultmann maintains an 'absolute contradiction' between God
and the world, so that the relation of the gospel to the
world cannot be one of 'completion' but only of 'abrogation'.
But the hiddenness of God should not lead us to conclude
that God is not our concern. If we cannot know God as he is
in himself, such knowledge is not our concern. Our concern is
with God as he affects the here and now of our existence -
anything beyond that is simply not our business. Once again,
we see how the underlying existentialism is at work - God
is not a 'general truth', but something which cuts into our
existence at specific points.
Put simply: we cannot speak of God without also speaking
of man. 'Theology speaks of God because it speaks of
man as he stands before God' (Faith and p. 52).
In another essay, 'The Crisis of Belief
h
(in Essays), Bultmann
says that 'knowledge about the power which creates and limits
our being is not theoretical knowledge but it is knowledge
which breaks in on us in critical moments of our being itself'
(pp. 6f). In other words, knowledge of God is not a 'general
truth', but an insight which is grasped in the challenge of
-17-
the moment, won in the moment of, decls;l,on.
This is a very theme In Bultmann's work, for
it shows how far his existentialism penetrates into his
interpretation of some crucial aspects of the Christian
faith. In this respect, .his .. essay.'What.Does it Mean to
Speak of God?' (in Faith and understandin
1
) is of great
importance: first publIshed In 1925, It m ght almost be
called the hinge on which the of his thought moves.
At the outset he rejects any speaking of God which makes him
into an object of thought (if we talk of the reality of
God we have already lost the reality of God). Only those
truths about God are meaningful which refer to the existential
situation of the speaker. He says that ' it is not legitimate
to speak about God in general statements, in universal
which are valid without reference to the concrete, existential
position of the speaker' (p. 53). Or as he puts it more
tersely, 'It is therefore clear that if a man will speak
of God, he must evidently speak of himself' (p. 55). This
does not mean of course that we speak of man instead of
speaking of God, but rather that in talking of Godwe must
also talk of man because God is only known in man's situation.
A good example of Bultmann's point here is his inter-
pretation of the notion of the transcendence of God. God's
transcendence is only known from within our situation. When
we speak of God as we must also speak of what
he transcends, if our talk is truly to be non-objectifying.
God as 'Wholly Other' is only meaningful as a reality which
determines our existence. As he puts it in an early essay,
'God is the mysterious, enigmatic power that meets us in
the world and in time. His transcendence is that of someone
having power over the temporal and the eternal: it is the
transcendence of the power which creates and sets limit.s
to our life ' (Essays, p. 9).
Bultmann, that is, has an existentialist doctrine of
God: God is meaningful only as a concern for men and not
as he is in himself. In a telling phrase he says that
'The reality of God is not that of the idea but of the
concrete happening'(Essays, p. 16). And once again he finds
this insight in the kerygma of the New Testament, particularly
in the demythologised teaching of Jesus. 'Jesus speaks
of God not in terms of general truths, in dogmas, but only
in terms of what God is for man, how he deals with man
It is impossible to speak of God in sense without
speaking of his activity' (Jesus and the Word, p. 110). In
more technical language, Bultmann.says that 'God is not a
given entity' (Faith and Understanding" p. 45). He cannot
be spoken of in the same way that we speak of worldly objects,
but only as he affects our existence now.
-18-
Because o ~ this, Bultmann has a distinctive idea of
the nature of revelation. Revelation is in no way to be
seen as the imparting of knowledge about an otherw!se-
\.tnknowable God. For Bulbnann there can be no notion of
'revealed truth', because this would make God into some-
thing 'out there'. Revelation is rather to be seen as an
encounter with God, as my meeting with God in my present
exIstence. Revelation is God's acts as they are directed
towards men, and so 'God's revelation does not make him
known in the sense of intellectual knowledge' (Faith and
Understanding, p. 45).
Similarly, Bultmann gives a fresh interpretation of the
meaning of God as creator. Usually when we talk of God
as creator, we refer to specific acts which he accomplished
at a certain time in the past, and which are the basis
of his lordship over creation in the present. For Bultmann
this makes God into an object: God's creatorhood is seen as
something apart from us. Hence we talk of God's creatorhood
on the analogy of a workman: God is the cosmic artist,
fashioning the heavens and the earth. Such a way of thinking
Bultmann regards as a Greek intrusion into biblical-existent-
ial thinking. To speak of God as the creator is to speak of
God as an existential truth: the truth that man and the
world stand every moment in the hands of God. 'Faith in
the creator is not a philosophical theory or a world-view
that one has in the background of his concrete experience
and action, but rather something which we realize precisely
in our experience and action as obedience to our Lord.
That God is the creator means that man's; action is not
determined by timeless principles, but rather by the concrete
situation of the moment'(Existence and Faith, p. 159).
This is why Bultmann claims that the doctrine of prov-
idence has no place in biblical faith. Providence sees God
in remote terms as a person or thing outside man, outside
the universe, sustaining it from afar like a kind of cosmic
mechanic: it is a foreign intrusion from Stoicism. God's
sustaining power which is at work in the creation is not
a 'general truth' but one which we experience afresh in
each moment of dependence on God: 'To believe in God is not
simply to believe in his existence, but meekly to submlt
to his will and wait upon him in quietness and confidence'
(Primitive Chr!s'Uani'ty, p. 36).
Finally, the' will of God is interpreted in existential
terms: this point nas-already been touched upon in looki.ng
at the interpretation which Bultmann gives of New Testament
ethics. God's will meets us in specific situations where
we find the demand to act, rather than in a legal code which
specifies moral principles. God's will is discovered in
-19-
encountering my neighbollr, since in such encounters we are
faced with the demand to love; ' ~ o ~ Jesus God's distinction
from and transcendence o v e ~ the world mean that he is always
the God who comes. He meets us not only in the future
judgement, but already here and now in daily life, with all
its challenges and opportunities. In the same way, man \
is distinct from the world in the sense that he has no
security in it. He cannot trust in any tangible reality.
His real life consists in his encounter wlthhis neighbour
and his response to the claims of God' (Prim'itive Christianity,
p. 93).
d. Christology and the Kerygma.
Anyone with even the sketchiest acquaintance with
modern New Testament study will know that one of the central
questions is that of the historical reliability of the
gospel records. Two questions in particular are Significant.
The first is the question of just how much history the
gospels contain: are they accurate accounts of what happened,
or are they largely theological reflections which fit
the facts to the theology they wish to put across? The
second is the question of whether accurate historical
knowledge is necessary for faith: if the gospels are not
by and large historically accurate, then does this matter
for faith in Jesus?
Bultmann gives a negative answer to both these questions.
We can, indeed, know very little about the events of Jesus'
ministry: once the gospels have been passed through the
filters of form-criticism, there is very little left in
the way of solid historical data. He writes that 'There
is no historical-biographical interest in the gospels, and
that is why they have nothing to say about Jesus' human
personality, his appearance and character, his origin,
education and development the gospels lack any interest
of a scientific-historical kind' (The History of the
Synoptic Tradition, p. 372).
For Bu1tmann, however, this lack of interest is something
positive, and that is why he gives a negative answer to the
second question. Faith in Jesus is not dependent upon
historical data, and hence Christology does not have any
historical interest. We know almost nothing about the
historical Jesus, and we need to know almost nothing. Bultmann
tries to support this from within the New Testament itself by
looking at the interest shown in the historical Jesus by
Paul. In his essay 'The Significance of the Historical
Jesus for the Theology of Paul' (in Faith and Understanding),
-20-
fie writes that 'Jesus' teach;1n9 ;1s - to all intents and
purposes - irrelevant to Paul' 223). If this is true,
what is the of Jesus fOr Christology?
Jesus is not significant as an historical person: of
that person we know almost nothing. And moreover, attempts to
rediscover the personality of Jesus simply reflect the pre-
suppositions of the interpreter - as in the liberal 'Lives
of Jesus', by men such as D. F. Strauss. Nor is Jesus
important because of his teaching: once again, we know almost
nothing about that. We cannot even say that Jesus' significance
for us can be stated in terms of the formulations made about
him by the early church - by seeing Jesus as the Messiah or
the Son of God or the Lord. Even these more explicit
Christological affirmations are not important today, since
they are expressed in the mythological language of an
obsolete religious view of the world.
There is, then, nothinobectlvel about
Jesus. What matters is Jesus as e meets us n t e ere and
now. The way in which Jesus meets us is through the kerygma:
through the word of Christian proclamation, when carefully
stripped of its mythological dress. Jesus is only of import-
ance because he is the 'occasion' of the proclamation which
challenges us to decide. Speaking of the meaning of the
deity of Christ, for example, Bultmann says that 'in the
New Testament the pronouncements about Jesus' divinity or
deity are not pronouncements of his nature but seek to give
expression to his significance I pronouncements which confess
that what he says and what he is do not have their origin
within the world, and are not human ideas nor events in the
world, but that God speaks to us in them and acts towards
us and for us' pp. 280f). Mlen we say 'Jesus is
God', that is, we are.not talking about Jesus as he is in
himself - for Bultmann that would be meaningless objectification.
Rather, we are speaking of the significance of Jesus for
me.
To ask about the meaning of Christology is to ask
about the meaning of the kerygma, not about the historical
Jesus or about the enthroned Son of God. About the historical
we cannot know, the enthroned Son of God is simply a
figment of the theological imagination. What is the place
of Jesus in this kerygma?
Bultmann puts this last question thus: what is specifically
Christian about 'Christian belief'? What does it have to do
wIth Jesus Christ? His answer is this: 'Christian belief has
its peculiar character in speaking of an event that gives it
this right (to talk to God), in saying that it hears a Word
which demands that it should recognise God as standing over
against man' (Essays, p. 11). Christian faith is Christological,
-21-
that is, becauae the which we now - a
which aultmann ia taomehow) linked with Jeaua. As an
historical or mythol09ical Jesus is lost to us today:
his significance is that in the we meet the challenge
to decide. As our critique of aultmann will point out, this
inability to root Christian faith in Jesus has provided
one of the areas of strongest disagreement over his
theological proposals.
e. The Nature of Faith.
If historical facts are of little importance for
Christology, they are similarly of little importance for
faith. To aultmann's notion of faith we now turn.
Faith is often seen as a species of knowledge: by faith
we know certain things to be true - for example, that God
is three-in-one - which we cannot know naturally, by unaided
reason. This definition of faith is very far from what
aultmann wishes to put in its place. Faith is not knowledge
about certain things, in just the same way that revelation
'I"S"ilOt revelation of certain things. Faith is not intellectual,
it is existential. That means to say that the meaning of
faith rests not in the grounds of faith, but merely in the
fact of faith's existence. Faith is not meaningful because
it is faith in certain things, but because it is an act of
man, a decision in obedience to the call of the
Because of thiS, faith has no grounds. It cannot be
'proved' by looking at its basis - for example, its historical
basis. It is not possible to argue that a man can have faith
in Jesus because from the gospels we know certain facts about
him which demand faith. Faith is an act without guarantee.
aultmann writes of the "free act" of faith: 'It cannot be
offered for investigation as something "to be proved". For
in that case we should be objectifying it and putting our-
selves outside it. A free act can only be done and in so
far as we speak of such doing, the possibilrry-of it can
only be believed' (Faith and Understanding, p. 63). More
Simply: 'Only in act is it sure I. (Ibid, p. 65). Faith is
an act of man's existence, not to be grounded by any data
or proved by any methods.
That is why faith is not a possession. We cannot,
that is, speak of 'having' faith, for that would make faith
into something 'out there'. Faith is an act, to be done
af.resh in each moment of decision rather than clung on to
as a means of security: 'Belief in God is never something
we can have as a possession. On the contrary, it implies
-22-
at decision tO,be taken' ( ~ s s a ' y s , PJ? l4f). Bultmann explains
his point by saying that faIth is like love; we cannot 'have'
love, but only exercise it in specific acts. In contrast
to such definitions, Bultmann J?roposes this; 'Adherence
to the gospel message is called "faith", and faith involves
a new existential understanding of Self. In it man realizes
his creatureliness and guilt. It is an act of obedience in
which man surrenders all his 'boasting', all desire to live
on his own resources, all adherence to tangible realities,
and assents to the scandalous fact of a crucified Lord'
(Primitive Christianity, pp. 238f). Faith is a new se1-
understandIng on the part of man, and ceases to be faith
when it is grounded by something outside itself, such as
historical facts: 'Historical research can never lead to
any result which could serve as a basis for faith' ( ~
and Understanding, p. 30).
It is this which explains Bultmann's assertion that his
highly critical reading of the New Testament does not affect
faith in the slightest, since he rejects any attempt to
validate faith by proving the historical reliability of the
biblical data. This rejection is for two reasons. The
first reason, the nature of faith as an existential act
without grounds, we have already looked at. The second
is the nature of history. For Bultmann, the establishment
of a body of historical data by the approved methods of
critical research gets us nowhere. What we would come
up with after such an investigation would not be 'history',
but an objectified scientific reconstruction. Bultmann's
view of history stresses not its 'objectivity', but its
importance now, its meaningfulness for my present existence.
'fhe proper attitude to history is not that of objective
obsel."vation but dialogue with history, as a 'living complex
of events in which he (man) Is essentially involved' (Jesus
and the Word, p: 11. For the whole question, see Bultmann's
book HlsEor
a
and Eschatol09
t
)' And he goes on to say that
'History oes not speak w en a man stops his ears when
he assumes neutrality, but speaks only when he comes seeking
answers to the problems which agitate him' (Ibid, p. 12).
History is only of importance if it affects us now, and so
cannot ground faith.
If that is so, then critical scholarship, inquiring into
the historical reliability of the biblical texts, can neither
undercut nor support faith, for faith is entirely free
from such grounding, and history does not offer it. To look
highly critically at the gospel records cannot disturb faith
for faith rests on personal, existential decision. 'The
truth of Christianity, like that of any other religion or
philosophy, is always a matter of personal decision, and the
historian has no right to deprive any man of that responsibility.
-23-
Nor, as is otten aS$erted, is it to end up by
assessing the value of what he ha$ been describing. He can
certainly clarity the issues involved in the decision. For
it is his task to interpret the movements of history as
possible ways of understanding human existence, thus demon-
strating their relevance today. By bringing the past to
life again, he should drive home the fact, that heretua
resagitur: this is your business' (Primi'tbre ChristIaiiity,
p. 12).
From the account of the shape of Bultmann's interpretation
of what the New Testament has to say about some major themes
- man, God, Christ and faith - the profundity with which
he has thought through the implications of his existentialism
is obvious. Our next job is to offer some critical reflections
on what must be for some a most account of the
Christian faith.
2. CRITIQUE
The Gospel and Existentialism
Our critique of Bu1tmann will look at the positions
analysed in the first part in reverse order: we examine,
first, his conclusions with regard to the New Testament, and
then, second, we go on to look at the relation between
Christian faith and existentialism in a broader perspective.
1. An Existentialist Reading of the New Testament.
What we wish to show is this: that the critical positions
which Bultmann adopts over the New Testament are often not
proven, and sometimes in need of serious revision. This
means that the support from the New Testament which Bultmann
claims to underlie his thought is in some cases not there,
or not there as strongly as his conclusions might
suggest. Bultmann wishes to show that the precedent for
demythologising lies in the New Testament itself - but
if it is true that the New Testament does not sit loose
on the 'mythology' as he claims, then his interpretation
of the text at those points will be all the weaker, and
sometimes invalid.
-24-
a. Critical Problems
. Bultmann's interpretation of the New Testament message
in existential depends upon answers to critical problems
which are not beyond debate. To eiamine whether this is
true, we look at a test case: of the development
of Christology in the New Testament. As we saw earlier, one
of the motives in the demythologising programme is that
Dultmann claims a lack of interest in the historical Jesus
by the later, more 'Christological' strands of the early
church. Not only does this mean a gap between the 'Jesus
of history' and the 'Christ of faith': it means in addition
that the growth of Christology is to be seen as growth
awa
t
from Jesus towards mythological elaboration. such
myt ology cannot and need not be ours, and so we look
underneath it for the kerygma.
Whilst this 'evolutionary' account of the development
of Christology is often buttressed with a wealth of historical
and critical evidence, other equally plausible accounts have
been given. We cannot hope in this space to give even the
briefest report on the exegetical and historical work which has
been done, but it may well be true, as C.F.D. Moule argues
in his book The Origin of Christology, that the most apt
analogy may not be the emergence of a new species, but
rather the opening of the flower from the bud. In other
words, the discontinuity between Jesus and later Christology
which is one of the main features of Bultmann's reading
of the New Testament may well not be there.
To focus the issue on a couple of areas of debate. First,
Bultmann argues that one of the strongest influences on the
growth of New Testament Christology was Gnosticism, which
provided some of the central concepts used, especially
in the Johannine writings (see, for example, his Theol09l
of the New Testament, I, para. 15, pritnitive Christlanfu,
1> 4, ch 4, and hIs commentary 'l'he._Gospel of John, e.g. pp.
24ff, on Jn l.lf). The problem here is that the dating
of the Gnostic evidence which is supposed to parallel or
influence the New Testament is almost insuperably difficult,
and Bultmann's dating is one among many options. The details
are out of our scope here, but a very good survey of the
issue is provided by Edwin Yamauchi in his book Pre-Christian
Gnosticism. After a careful review of the evidence In detaIl,
he concludes that 'we have seen how the imposing scholarly
edifice of Reitzenstein's (an early Gnostic scholar) and
Bultmann's pre-Christian Gnosticism is but little more than
an elaborate, multi-storied, many-roomed house of cards,
whose foundations have been shaken, some of whose structures
need buttressing and others have collapsed, leaving a mass
of debris with but few timbers fit for use in reconstruction'
(pp. 184f).
A second example would be the account of the growth

of Testament Christology in terms of a three-
stage growth. Stage one Early Chr!stol09Y
(the very ead!est sta<]e); thb h tollowed by Jewish
Hellen!stic Christology (e.<]. Paul), and Unally by Gentile
Hellenistic Christology (the very latest stage). This sort
of schematisation, ,has been, ,offered in such books as F. Hahn' s
study The Titles of Jesus' 'in Christology, or (in less radical
form), by R. H. Fuller In The Foundations of New Testament
it is also a strong on the exegesIs
of many commentaries. Such an account owes its origin to
Bultmann, and it is a clear logical development of some
of the critical positions which he laid down earlier in
the century, claiming that as Christology develops, it is
less influenced by Jesus and more by its religious environment.
This kind of thesis can, of course, only be tackled
with the thoroughness it deserves by exhaustive critical work.
Much of what has been done on the problem recently tends to
revise the conclusions of Bultmann and his followers. From
a specifically evangelical perspective, I. H. Marshall's
recent book The Ori9'insof New Testall\ent Christology is a
helpful introductIon to the questIon whIch provides useful
accounts of the major works in the field, as well as offering
a cogent alternative. At a somewhat more technical level,
mention ought to be made, not only of Moule's book mentioned
above, but o. Cullmann' s study The Christologyof the New
'l'esta:ment and M. Hengel's little bOok The' Sono! God. An
these argue in a scholarly way that the three-stage account
is simply inadequate in the face of the evidence.
In other words, Bultmann's work on the critical problem
of outside influence on the development of the early church's
view of Jesus is not at all definitive. Wolfhart Pannenberg
gives a timely warning against the ease with which modern
historians of the New Testament chase up parallels and make
them into influences: 'The history of ideas is not a chemistry
of concepts that have been arbitrarily stirred together and
are then neatly separated again by the modern historian'
(Jesus - God and Man, p. 153). Bultmann's chemistry of
concepts in particular seems to have been somewhat clumsily
handled. '
In reply to this line of criticism, Bultmann would
obviously say that even if the later strands are organically
connected to the earlier strands - even if, indeed, they go
back to Jesus himself - they remain mythological and are
not necessary for faith in Jesus, since what matters is the
challenge of the moment and not some 'objective' facts. That
this is not an authentic representation of the thought of
the New Testament, we now turn to discover.
b. The New Testament and Objectivity.
By 'objectivity' we refer to those things which remain
true and meanin9tul in and for themselves, of
any meaning they may have 'subjectivity'. Bultmann,
we recall, rejects such as But
how true is this rejection to the New Testament? We will
turn to the larger theological aspect of this question in
the second part of our critique. For the moment it will
suffice to look at the New Testament itself to see whether
it does display the lack of interest in the objective which
Bultmann claims, or whether it does, in fact, emphasise
objective elements.
The first area to look at is the importance of the
historical Jesus. Bultmann claims that the person and
teaching of Jesus are almost entirely absent from later
Christology. What matters about Jesus is not what he was
but that he was. The details are not that
is necessary is the mere fact of his existence as a jumping-
off point for the call of the kerygma.
A good deal of work has been done on this issue in recent
years, especially by those who have been influenced by Bultmann,
and in general the conclusion has been that the historical
Jesus is of much greater importance as an 'objective fact'
for the later parts of the New Testament than Bultmann
allowed. Thus there has arisen what has been called the
'new quest' of the historical Jesus, which seeks to inquire
into just how significant he is and just what continuity
there is between Jesus himself and the Christ proclaimed
by the early church. I. H. Marshall' s book I Believe in
the Historical Jesus is a helful introductory report on
the problems raIsed, but most useful is James Robinson's
The New Quest of the Historical Jesus, which shows in detail
how the conclusIons about 'objectIvIty' at which Bultmann
arrived have been subjected to telling criticism.
One particular area could perhaps be mentioned in a
little more detail. In looking at Bultmann we saw that he
proposes that Paul shows almost no interest in facts about
Jesus. However, the disjunction between Jesus and Paul
is better seen from the standpoint of the growth of salvation-
history and in terms of the differing interests of each,
as both H. Ridderbos and F. F. Bruce argue in their books
on the issue, both entitled Paul and Jesus. One study,
G. N. stanton's book Jesus of Nazareth In NeW Testament
preachij)8' is a model of exegetIcal work on the objectIve
facts a ut Jesus in the kerygma of the later church. On
the r.elation of Paul and Jesus, for example, he writes
that 'Paul's references to the character of Jesus provide
support for the rejection of the view that the Pauline
kerygma included ono more than the mere Dass ('that') of
the historical existence of Jesus. What:nappened between
-27-
the birth and death ot and what tau9ht were
both deeply rooted whole theolo9ica1
(p. 110).
This must mean that Bultmann's ideas on the lack of
objectivity in the New Testament must be heavily qualified.
And it means futher, that his notions of revelation and
faith are to be subjected to criticism, for in both these
areas Bultmann denied an objective element. Revelation is
not revelation of : it is the call to decide, faith is
not faith in :-it is an existential act. Yet Paul's
summary preaching in Corinthians 15.3-8, for example,
gives us a clear objective framework for the Christian
gospel: the major theological points of Paul's message
are given objective grounds, which are the historical
facts which Paul adduces as support. It is to these
historical elements which we now turn.
c. The Gospel and History.
Our review of the 'objective' elements in the gospel
suggests a much stronger interest in history than Bultmann
would allow. In recent years, largely through the influence
of parallel work in the Old Testament field, the notion of
'salvation-history' has been applied to the New Testament.
'Salvation-history' is a term which is used to show that
the God of the Bible reveals who he is through his acts
in history: we know what God is like because he has done
certain things on the plane of historical experience
\-lhich reveal his character. Examples of such 'mighty \
acts of God' would be the deliverance from Egypt, the con-
quest of Canaan, the deliverance from exile or - most
especially - the ministry of Jesus, culminating in his
Resurrection. Such an approach to the New Testament
we find in the work of Oscar Cullmann, whose books Christ
and Time and Salvation in History are important studIes
of the place of hIstory In the gospel. Another German
thinker, Wolfhart Pannenberg, puts even greater stress,
not only on 'salvation-history' but also on secular history
as the locus of God's revelation, not only in the Old
and New Testrunents, but today also. His ideas are set
out in a book which he edited under the title Revelation
as History, and are applied to Christology in hIs very
weIghty Jesus - God and Man. Over against Bultmann, both
CUllmann and pannenberg, whilst in many respects different,
have emphasised that God is known, not in private, existential
moments of decision, but in his concrete self-revelation by
his historical acts.
Evangelicals have been eager to use the insights here,
-28-
especially those of wlth hls of the
historicity of the Resurrection. It is certainly true that
salvation-history is of value in bringlng theology back
to the objective basis of which the New speaks
and which Bultmann neglects. But there is a dangerr that
of reducing the Christian faith to a species of rationalism,
in the following way. Whilst it is true that faith in the
Bible is faith in certain historical facts, simply observing
those facts withOut faith will not yield a revelation of God.
If we do not say that the facts have to be viewed with faith,
we are in effect saying that unaided reason is able to deduce
God's revelation from historical data. But faith is not so
self-evident: the objective elements of the New Testament
are only grounds of faith - they do not render faith super-
fluous. This danger could be illustrated from the work of
Pannenberg. But, given the danger, it remains important
to realise that faith does need what Macquarrie calls an
'empIrical anchor' (The Scope of demythologising, p. 95).
Christian faith is faith in a God who acted in history,
definitively in Jesus. Both 'faith' and 'history' are
important components, and Bultmann's exclusion of history
means a reduced account of the Christian gospel. And it
means, further, that the gulf between 'objective history'
and 'existential encounter' of which Bultmann speaks, is
an unnecessary and unjustified account of what the New
Testament says.
2. Existentialism and Christian Faith.
From our conclusions about Bultmann's reading of the
New Testament - particularly his insufficient emphasis on
its objective grounds - we now go on to see how this relates
to the theological use of existentialism as a framework
or set of concepts for stating the Christian gospel. We
saw in our exposition that for Bultmann, existential inter-
pretation means that only those theological statements are
valid which refer to the existential situation of the speaker.
How far is this valid? How far, that is, is it true to say
that 'non-objectifying' or 'existential' language is the
only legitimate way of speaking of God?
At the outset, we must agree with Bultmann that there
is some existential reference in all theological language,
especially biblical language. Biblical language about God
is not language which simply describes or gives information:
it does not offer a catalogue of the attributes of God.
Rather, it is language which, whilst describing who God act-
ually is, challenges the situation of the hearer. If we
read the prophetic books of the Old Testament, it is clear
-29-
that the way in which those God - tor
example, his character as holy judge ts a way
meant to affect -us now. - ts thus right when
he says (AA Existentialist The-olm, 14,:,22) that
existentialist thought does have a certain insight into
the authentic thought-world of the Bible, particularly as
it speaks of the 'living God', who is no philosophical
abstraction, but active among his people. The question
goes much deeper than this, however - as MacQuarrie would
acknowledge. It is not whether existentialist readings of
the Bible are a fruitful-approach to the interpretation of
certain parts of it, but whether they give - as they claim -
a full account of the biblical data.
To answer that question, we look at two issues. First,
the question of whether in existentialist theology 'God'
is simply a label which we use to describe the subjectivity
of the man of faith rather than an objective divine being.
Second, an alternative to Bultmann's account of the nature
of God's objectivity. It will be seen that the test-case
in both issues is that of the doctrine of God.
a. Reducing God to a cipher.
By asking whether Bultmann reduces the word 'God' to a
cipher, what we are asking is this. When Bultmann talks
of God, is all 'objective reference' lost? Does he speak
of God in such a way that the objectivity which we found
in the New Testament is dissolved, since all theological
statements come to have an existential reference? According
to Bultmann God is only known in the act of decision in ob-
edience to the kerygma. If that is true, then does God
remain an objective being, independent of man? Or is the
word 'God' simply the label which we give to certain states
of human existence, a label which does not refer to any
real content outside man?
For those to whom this way of interpreting the word
'God' may seem unfamiliar, we could cite a parallel. In
Homer, the great hero Achilles is described as a 'lion'.
Clearly in so talking we do not mean that Achilles was
actually a lion: we mean that he was like a lion, because
of his bravery or fierceness. The word 'lion' does not
have any 'objective reference' in the phrasp. 'Achilles is
a lion'. Is the same true in speaking of God? When Bultmann
speaks of God, does he mean the word in a literal sense,
or in a non-literal sense, as a way of talking of certain
human attributes?
Bultmann's problem is very much a real one for all
Christian theologians: how can we speak of God in such
-30-
a way that he 'is It is too easy of
God to fail to God in a sufficiently concrete
way, and thus to cease to challenge us, in the way that
we saw biblical lan9uage challenges its God is
easily lost in conceptual abstractions, so that it is
often difficult to recognise the God of the proclamation
of the prophets or the teaching of Jesus. How can we
speak of God in such a way that he remains real?
In answer, Bultmann safeguards the reality of God by
saying that God can only be spoken of from within the
existential situation of man. God is real when he is
spoken of, not in objectifying terms as a being 'out there',
but in existential terms. He sums up this way of safe-
guarding the reality of God when he writes that 'God is not
a given entity' and Understanding, p. 45). There are
two ways of reading what Bultmann says there: the difficulty
is deciding which one he means:
The first (charitable) interpretation would say that
Bultmann means that God cannot be spoken of from a position
of neutrality, but that he must be spoken of as one
who challenges me. If Bultmann simply means this - that
God is not a remote object - then that is a profoundly
biblical insight. But there is another (less charitable)
interpretation which says that Bultmann means that God is
not an entity at all: the word 'God' simply describes the
challenges we meetin existence. The differen.::e between
these two interpretations of \'Ihat Bultmann is saying
is that between existential and atheistic interpretation.
'Atheistic' interpretation of the word 'God' may
sound strange to many: but that it is a latent danger
within existentialist theology can be seen from the work
of two thinkers who have consciously taken Bultmann's
insights further.
The first is the New Testament scholar Herbert Braun,
who has sought to develop Bultmann's notion that God is
only known in the challenge of the here and now. Braun
pushes this idea to its extreme by saying that all talk of
God's objectivity as an independently-existing being is
to be set aside. He writes that 'God is not to be under-
stood as the one existing for himself I can speak of
God only where I can speak of man, and hence anthropologically ..
For even according to the New Testament, God in the final
analysis, i.e. all inadequate objectifying of the doctrine
of God set aside, is where I am placed under obligation,
where I am engaged God would then be a definite type
of relation with one's fellow-man' ('The Problem of a
New Testament Theology', Journal for Theology and Church 1,
-31-
pp. 182f, cf his essax 'The Meanln9 of New
ChristolOC;JX' in vol. 4 of the .. ",.'J\galn,ln
his;r;ecentlx-tx-anslAted book: ,J"esUs' 'Of Na'z'A';ret'h:.' The' Man and
his Time, he w;rites that 'When Jesus saxs 'God', he is
thinking of repentance, of radical obedience, of absolute
grace' (p. 128) and thus that 'About God one can only
speak in reference to the carrying out of certain actions,
the actions of obedience and humility' (Ibid). Not only
is God only met in the challenge to obedience and repentance:
he is obedience and repentance.
Similar conclusions are to be found in the work of the
systematic theologian and philosopher Fritz Buri. He sees
faith, for example, in purely existential terms as a way of
understanding man with no reference to any objective God:
'It is the primordial intention of faith to discover the
meaning of our existence and to enable us to act in such
a way as not to miss this meaning' '(Thinking Faith, p. 13).
Christology is given a similar non-objective interpretation:
'Christ's reality emerges for us when we live and act,
when we perceive it in practice around us' (Christian Faith
in Our Time, p. 13) 'God' thus becomes, not a person In"
fiimself, but the label which we give to our experience of
acting responsibly towards other persons: 'For our
personhood God himself is personal in the voice which
summons us to responsibility'(Thinking Faith, p. 95)
It should be clear from our brief look at the New
Testament data that 'objectivity' is one of the central
components of the structure of what it says about God. Whilst
God does affect me here and now, he only does so as an
objective, independent being. The weakness of Bultmann's
programme of translating of gospel into non-objectifying
terms is that God's independence is lost - a danger we see clearly
in the work of Braun and Buri.
It is important to recognise that this danger is only
latent in Bultmann: he himself clearly tries to avoid allowing
existential interpretation becoming atheistic interpretation.
This is clear from chapter 5 of his book JesUs Chr'ist'and
entitled 'The Meaning of God as ActIng'. Here
Bultmann sets out hi$ familiar assertion that God's action
can only be spoken of from within worldly action: theology
must abandon mythical ways of talking about the action of
God as something which comes from outside (for example,
in miracles). But Bultmann goes on to say that this does
not mean that God is identical with the world, or that he
has no independent being apart from the world. This
he calls the paradoxical 'nevertheless' of faith. Faith,
-32-
whilst it accepts that 'there remains no room ~ o r God's
working' from outside (p. 65), saxs 'nevertheless' ; it
is nevertheless permisible to speak ot God as mOre than
the here and now. And so whilst Bultmanh says that 'only
such statements about God are legitimate as express the
existential relation between God and man' (po 69), this
does not mean atheism: 'From the statement that to speak
of God is to speak of myself, it by no means follows that
God is not outside the believer' (po 70). The ambiguity
of Bultmann over this point makes clear how easily his
insights could,be developed into the atheistic conclusions
of Braun and Buri.
b. '1'he Objectivity of God.
Bultmann's answer to the question of how we can safe-
guard the reality of God in existence leads him into
ambiguities which he can only reconcile by the paradoxical
'nevertheless' of faith. What other answer is there to
the very real problem he is trying to solve?
A solution might perhaps be found from the perspective
which sees that the way in which Bultmann asks the question
is itself false. Bultmann always speaks in terms of an
irreconcilable polarity between talking of God in 'objective'
terms and in 'existential' terms. We cannot for him talk
of God as an object and also talk of him as something which
cuts into the quick of our present existence7 we cannot
talk of God in existential terms and still retain his object-
ivity. But this polarity is surely false. God's objectivity
and his significance as an existential concern of men are
not mutually exclusive opposites. The question could be
more fruitfully approached by saying that God is only
of such existential significance because he is over and
above all that a free, independent being.
As an example we could look at the account of the
revelation of God to the people of Israel at mount Sinai
in Exodus 19 and 20. In reading the account, there is an
unmistakable element of God's significance: God here is
a God who confronts his people in a highly concrete way. And
yet he only does so as the free God who is apart from his
people. This would be pointed to by God's self-description
in Exodus 20.2: 'I am the Lord your God'. The words 'I am
the Lord' point to God as free, self-existing, sovereign
- objectively independent. Yet the phrase goes on 'I am
the Lord *our God': God's freedom as the objective God is a
freedom w {ch he exercises in choosing to be our God, in
choosing to be God alongside men. In this way, his freedom
-33-
and his existential significance are not contradictory, but
are rather the same truth. The objective God is the God
who meets us - this is the theological meaning-of covenant.
Moreover: it is not true that to speak of God's object-
ivity is to objectify God. That would, of course, be true
if God were not an object in and for himself. And it would
also be true if our talking of God makes him into a remote
object towards which we can adopt a neutral attitude. But
it would not be true of the biblical God: for there we
meet with a God who can be spoken of in 'objective' (not
objectifying!) terms because he presents himself as such.
This is the meaning of revelation: to say that God shows
himself to us as an object is neither to deny his objectivity
nor his significance for men. It is to say that the God
who meets us is one who cuts into our existence now.
CONCLUSION
Space does not permit a fuller critique of Bultmann's
thinking. But it is hopefully clear that from the standpoint
of our conclusions with regard to objectivity, it should be
posssible to think through what Bultmann has to say about
many themes: faith, creation, providence, ethics, the nature
of truth, the nature of time and history. It may well be
true, then, that in taking as one of his central concerns the
nature of God as object, Bultmann has pierced to the heart of
an area where our thinking needs to be precise and - above
all - biblical.
Bultmann's exploration of this area brought into play
all his immense gifts of scholarship and reflective power:
all this is abundantly clear for anyone who sits down and
actually reads what he has to say. Yet it is also clear that
the map which Bultmann makes of his findings is only partially
reliable, and at times, positively misleading. All of which
is an ilustration of an aphorism from Bultmann's favourite
thinker, Heidegger: IHe who thinks on the grand scale makes
grand mistakes'.
-34-
E'or futher reading.
This is a fairly full list, giving some idea of the scope
of work that is available in English. Brief comments are
added where they may help. But remember - read Bultmann first!
1. Works by Bultmann available in English.
Essays, Philosophical and Theological
Existence and Faith
Faith and Understanding
(the above three books collect essays by Bultmann on
a wide variety of topics)
The Gospel of John (a full-scale commentary showing Bultmann
the exegete at work)
History and Eschatologx
The HIstory of the Synoptic Tradition (the classic of
form-cri tlclsm)
Jesus and the Word (a classic existentialist account of
Jesus)
Jesus Christ and Mrthology (on demythologizing)
The Johannlne EpIs les
'New Testament and Mythology' in H. W. Barthsch (ed),
Kerygma and Myth I.
The old and New Man in the Letters of Paul (3 exegetical
studies)
Primitive Chrlstianity in its contemporar
a
Setting (the
fruit of Bultmann's work on the backgroun of the New
Testament)
Theology of the New Testament (his major work of N.T.
analysis)
This World and the Beyond (a collection of sermons)
A small selection is available in E. J. Tinsley (ed),
Rudolf Bultmann
2. Works about Bultmann in English
F. Gogarten, Demythologizing and H i s t o r ~
H. Gollwit7.er, The ExIstence of God asonfessed by Faith
(excellent but very difficult)
I. Henderson, Myth in the New Testament
" , Rudolf Bultmann (both short, lucid,
knowledgeable)
P. E. Hughes, Scripture and Myth
G. V. Jones, Chrlstology and Myth in the New Testament
C. Kegley, The Theology of Rudolf Bultmann
L. Malevez, The Christian Message and Myth (a Catholic
treatment)
-35-
J. Macquarrie, An Existentialist Theology
" , The Scope of Oemytholoqlzlnq
(both excellent)
S. M. Ogden, Christ Without Mtth
H. P. Owen, RevelatIon and Ex stence (sober,
logical critique)
R. Roberts, Rudolf Bultmann's Theologl (recent, highly
critical)
W. Schmithals, An Introduction to the Theology of
Rudolf Bultmann
B. H. Throckmorton, The New Testament and Mythology
N. J. Young, Historl and ExIstentIalIst Theology
3. Works on the Background to Bultmann.
H. J. Blackham, Six Existentialist Thinkers
R. A. Johnson, The Origins of DemythologIzIng
(brilliant)
J. Macquarrie, Existentialism (a very good introduction)
" , Martin HeIdegger (short but useful)
G. Steiner, Heidegger
-36-