Rudolf Bultmann (1884-1976) is most widely known for his task of “demythologizing” the New Testament, supposedly made necessary due to “the conflict between the mythological view of the world contained in the Bible and the modern views of the world which are influenced by scientific thinking.” 1 His form-critical approach has been very influential in New Testament studies, especially the notion that “the form of a specific story or saying makes it possible to determine its Sitz im Leben (‘setting in life’), or setting in the life of the early church.” 2
Understanding his methodology of interpretation is critical to Christian scholars and believers who recognize, contrary to Bultmann’s basic premise, that the truthfulness of the worldview presented by the New Testament is a necessary condition for the truthfulness of the New Testament message of salvation. As apologist Norman Geisler points out, critics of the Bible often argue “that much of the New Testament’s picture of Jesus and his teachings evolved over time in the social context and theological meanderings of the early church.” 3 Furthermore, the critics charge that “Jesus the man became lost in legend and myth, buried under supernatural claims of such events as the virgin birth, miracles, and the resurrection. Behind these events were the patterns of Greek and Roman gods.” 4 Theologians like Rudolf Bultmann, though not rejecting Christian “faith,” have joined the atheists and skeptics in this sort of higher critical analysis of the New Testament record.
Contrary to the liberal theologians of the nineteenth century, however, Bultmann had no intention of eliminating the mythology of the New Testament. Rather, by applying a antisupernatural, existentialist methodology to Scripture, he sought to interpret the mythology in order to uncover the “kerygma,” or essential proclamation of God. 5 Bultmann explains that the purpose of demythologizing is “to make clear the call of the Word of God. It will interpret Scripture, asking for a deeper meaning of mythological conceptions and freeing the Word of God from a by-gone world-view.” 6Richard Palmer observes that Bultmann’s demythologizing “is directed against the shallow literalism in the modern way of seeing, the tendency of laymen and even of theologians to regard language as merely information rather than as the medium through which God confronts man with the possibility of a radically new . . . self-understanding.” 7 In other words, demythologizing is a “ window to the sacred.” 8 Indeed, Bultmann claims that “if the truth of the New Testament proclamation is to be preserved, the only way is to demythologize it.” 9
To better discern where Bultmann is situated philosophically, we turn to Palmer’s helpful observation of the two primary traditions in contemporary hermeneutics: “There is the tradition of Schleiermacher and Dilthey, whose adherents look to hermeneutics as a general body of methodological principles which underlie interpretation. And there are the followers of Heidegger, who see hermeneutics as a philosophical exploration of the character and requisite conditions for all understanding.” 10 And while Palmer places Bultmann within the tradition of Heidegger, he also notes that Bultmann “still sees hermeneutics as the philosophy that should guide exegesis rather than as understanding theory per se.” 11 Hence, Bultmann’s demythologizing of the New Testament, which as we will see is certainly an exploration of man’s self-understanding in the tradition of Heidegger, is also a methodology through which that understanding is reached. Bultmann plainly states that “de-mythologizing is an hermeneutic method, that is, a method of interpretation, of exegesis.” 12 Hans Georg Gadamer writes that Bultmann “favors methodological discussion.” 13 Further, Gadamer admits that he was personally “convinced that the principle of demythologization has a purely hermeneutic aspect. According to Bultmann this program is not supposed to decide dogmatic questions in advance.” 14
Even so, while Bultmann’s demythologization falls within the methodology tradition of Schleiermacher and Dilthey, he was clearly influenced by Martin Heidegger, his colleague at the University of Marburg in the 1920s. Palmer observes: “The emphasis of Bultmann’s demythologizing is obviously on transforming one’s self-understanding. In the matter of existential self-understanding, Bultmann is clearly indebted to Heidegger.” 15 Palmer highlights three areas in which Heidegger’s influence is most evident. The first area concerns the distinction between language as objective fact and language “filled with personal import and the power to command obedience.” 16 Second is the idea that God “confronts man as Word, as language.” 17Finally, Bultmann’s demythologization reveals the influence of Heidegger in that the New Testament “kerygma as Word in words speaks to existential self-understanding.”18
Indeed, Bultmann was quite aware of the accusations that he was “borrowing Heidegger’s categories and forcing them upon the New Testament.” 19 His response to such criticism was to argue that “the [existential] philosophers are saying the same thing as the New Testament and saying it quite independently.” 20 In other words, either through philosophy or divine revelation, one can arrive at the idea that man “must immerse himself in the concrete world of nature, and thus inevitably lose his individuality, or he must abandon all security and commit himself unreservedly to the future, and thus alone achieve his authentic Being.” 21
Before exploring how Bultmann used his program of demythologization to “deliver” the kerygma of the New Testament from its outdated mythological worldview, it would be helpful to see how he interpreted myth in general within an existentialist framework. Bultmann claims that “The real purpose of myth is not to present an objective picture of the world as it is, but to express man’s understanding of himself in the world in which he lives. Myth should be interpreted not cosmologically, but anthropologically, or better still, existentially.” 22 In other words, “The real purpose of myth is to speak of a transcendent power which controls the world and man, but that purpose is impeded and obscured by the terms in which it is expressed.” 23 Myths express “man’s awareness that he is not lord of his own being,” but also that “in this state of dependence he can be delivered from the forces within the visible world.” 24 Of course, the whole concept of myth is pure folly to modern man, who, for better or worse is conditioned to think within the terms and conditions of modern science. 25 As Palmer notes, “Demythologizing is an attempt to separate the essential message from the cosmological ‘mythology’ which no modern man can believe.” 26
That being said, it is instructive to hear Bultmann describe the worldview presented on the pages of the New Testament:
The cosmology of the New Testament is essentially mythical in character. The world is viewed as a three-storied structure, with the earth in the centre, the heaven above, and the underworld beneath. . . . [Earth] is the scene of the supernatural activity of God and his angels on the one hand, and of Satan and his daemons on the other. These supernatural forces intervene in the course of nature and in all that men think and will and do. Miracles are by no means rare. Man is not in control of his own life. . . . History does not follow a smooth unbroken course; it is set in motion and controlled by these supernatural powers. This aeon is held in bondage by Satan, sin, and death . . . and hastens towards its end. That end will come very soon, and will take the form of a cosmic catastrophe. . . . Then the Judge will come from heaven, the dead will rise, the last judgement will take place, and men will enter into eternal salvation or damnation. 27
Of course, “all this is the language of mythology. . . . [And] to this extent the kerygma is incredible to modern man, for he is convinced that the mythical view of the world is obsolete.” 28 It is, therefore, the task of theology to strip “the Kerygma from its mythical framework, of ‘demythologizing’ it.” 29
But Bultmann does not rest content with his criticism of the cosmology of the New Testament. He also roundly criticizes the traditional understanding of the person and work of Jesus Christ , as well as the whole concept of miracle. To Bultmann, “it is beyond question that the New Testament presents the event of Jesus Christ in mythical terms. . . . Jesus Christ is certainly presented as the Son of God, a pre-existent divine being, and therefore to that extent a mythical figure.” 30 That is not to imply that the historical Jesus of Nazareth did not truly exist within the space-time continuum: “But he is also a concrete figure of history – Jesus of Nazareth. His life is more than a mythical event; it is a human life which ended in the tragedy of crucifixion. We have here a unique combination of history and myth.” 31 The task of demythologizing the events of the life of Christ is, therefore, to “dispense with the objective form in which they are cast.” 32 For it is precisely that outmoded objective form that veils the New Testament kerygma.
Concerning the crucifixion, Bultmann notes how the New Testament teaches that “[Christ] is the victim whose blood atones for our sins. He bears vicariously the sin of the world, and by enduring the punishment for sin on our behalf he delivers us from death.” 33 However, “this mythological interpretation is a hotch-potch of sacrificial and juridical analogies, which have ceased to be tenable for us to-day.” 34 To modern man, the doctrine of the atonement is quite objectionable: “How can the guilt of one man be expiated by the death of another who is sinless – if indeed one may speak of a sinless man at all?” 35
The resurrection is especially incredible, “a mythical event pure and simple.” 36 But more than that, modern man has no choice but to dispense with the whole notion of miracles and supernatural powers altogether. 37 A miracle “is not visible, not capable of objective, scientific proof which is possible only within an objective view of the world. To the scientific, objective observer God’s action is a mystery.” 38 In fact, the true “Christian faith is apparently not concerned with miracles; rather it has cause to exclude the idea of miracle. . . . The authority of Scripture is not abandoned when the idea of miracle is relinquished.” 39 When all is said and done, “there is nothing specifically Christian in the mythical view of the world as such. It is simply the cosmology of a pre-scientific age.” 40 But despite objections to the contrary, Bultmann maintains that “to de-mythologize is to reject not Scripture or the Christian message as a whole, but the world-view of Scripture, which is the world-view of a past epoch, which all too often is retained in Christian dogmatics and in the preaching of the Church. To de-mythologize is to deny that the message of Scripture and of the Church is bound to an ancient world-view which is obsolete.” 41
The question arises at this point as to what is left of the Christian message once the mythical worldview of the New Testament has been methodically stripped away. It is here that the influence of Martin Heidegger is most evident. To understand Bultmann’s existentialist interpretation of Scripture, we must make note of two primary considerations.
First, is Bultmann’s concept of “fore-understanding.” Bultmann observes: “It will be clear that every interpreter brings with him certain conceptions, perhaps idealistic or psychological, as presuppositions of his exegesis, in most cases unconsciously. But then the question arises, which conceptions are right and adequate? Which presuppositions are right and adequate? Or is it perhaps impossible to give an answer to these questions?” 42 Jean Grondin explains the definitive formulation that Bultmann gives to the concept of fore-understanding: “Human understanding takes its direction from the fore-understanding deriving from its particular existential situation, and this fore-understanding stakes out the thematic framework and parameters of every interpretation.” 43
Rejecting the suggestion of some that there can be any interpretation without presuppositions, Bultmann argues that one must discover the “correct” presuppositions, or, the right questions that one should ask of a text. 44 The kind of questions one asks are conditioned by his “life-relation.” Reminiscent of Heidegger’s hermeneutic circle, 45 Bultmann says that it is within this “life-relation” that one gains “a certain understanding of the matter in question, and from this understanding grow the conceptions of exegesis. From reading the texts you will learn, and your understanding will be enriched and corrected. Without such a relation and such previous understanding . . . it is impossible to understand any text.” 46 Owing to the insights of existentialist philosophy, Bultmann explains that every interpreter has one essential “life-relation” that they share with all other interpreters. This shared “life-relation” forms the basis for the correct question to ask of the New Testament text: “How is man’s existence understood in the Bible?” 47 Bultmann explains, in responding to critics, that he is not singling out the New Testament in using this approach: “I am driven to [the primacy of this question] by the urge to inquire existentially about my own existence. But that is a question which at bottom determines our approach to and interpretation of all historical documents. For the ultimate purpose in the study of history is to realize consciously the possibilities it affords for the understanding of human existence.” 48
Gadamer explains the significance of this statement: “This is where the theological concept of self-understanding comes in. This idea also has obviously been derived from Heidegger’s transcendental analysis of existence. The being that is concerned with its being presents itself, through its understanding of being, as a means of access to the question of being. The movement of the understanding of being is itself seen to be historical, as the basic nature of historicity. This is of decisive importance for Bultmann’s concept of self-understanding.” 49 Indeed, so critical is existentialism to Bultmann’s interpretation of the New Testament, that despite his commitment to cosmological naturalism, he admits that “natural science is not the only challenge which the mythology of the New Testament has to face. There is the still more serious challenge presented by modern man’s understanding of himself.” 50
Thus, we come to the second consideration concerning Bultmann’s existentialism: the authentic life. Existentialist philosophy, which explains “what it means to exist,” 51sheds light on the New Testament exhortation to not “live after the flesh.” Natural man, that is, man who has not yet experienced the authentic life of faith, is weighed down with anxiety. Focusing his anxiety upon his own security, the natural man, “in proportion to his opportunities and his success in the visible sphere . . . places his ‘confidence’ in the ‘flesh.’” 52 This “glorying” is, however, “incongruous with man’s real situation, for the fact is that he is not secure at all. Indeed, this is the way in which he loses his true life and becomes the slave of that very sphere which he had hoped to master, and which he hoped would give him security.” 53 The contradiction between natural man’s false sense of security and his real “life-relation” creates what the Bible calls “‘this world, the world in revolt against God. This is the way in which the ‘powers’ which dominate human life come into being, and as such they acquire the character of mythical entities.” 54
The New Testament proclaims that natural man can escape this inauthenticity only by the “life of faith,” namely, the “abandonment of all self-contrived security.” 55Indeed, “It is the word of God which calls man away from his selfishness and from the illusory security which has built up for himself. It calls him to God, who is beyond the world and beyond scientific thinking. At the same time, it calls man to his true self. For the self of man, his inner life, his personal existence is also beyond the visible world and beyond rational thinking.” 56 Rejecting the anxieties and false security of the inauthentic life, a man of faith embraces with radical abandonment the “eschatological existence” of being a new creation. 57
In consideration of the biblical teaching concerning the identity of the believer, Bultmann notes how the “New Testament and the philosophers agree that the authentic life is possible only because in some sense it is already a present possession. But there is one difference – the New Testament speaks thus only to Christian believers, only to those who have opened their hearts to the redemptive action of God. It never speaks thus to natural man, for he does not possess life, and his plight is one of despair.” 58 However, the life of faith should never be considered as a final possession; instead “it needs constant renewal in every fresh situation. . . . To believe means not to have apprehended but to have been apprehended. It means always to be travelling along the road between the ‘already’ and the ‘not yet’, always to be pursuing a goal.” 59 Borrowing from Heidegger’s concept of the “historicity of Being,” Bultmann explains the New Testament understanding of human life: “Man exists in a permanent tension between the past and the future. At every moment he is confronted with an alternative. Either he must immerse himself in the concrete world of nature, and thus inevitably lose his individuality, or he must abandon all security and commit himself unreservedly to the future, and thus alone achieve his authentic Being.” 60
Though faced with regular criticism for, as he puts it, “borrowing Heidegger’s categories and forcing them upon the New Testament,” Bultmann responded by claiming that, in reality, the existentialist philosophers are merely saying the same thing that the New Testament has been saying all along. 61 So congruent is the New Testament to existentialist philosophy that “the very fact that it is possible to produce a secularized version of the New Testament conception of faith proves that there is nothing mysterious or supernatural about the Christian life.” 62 So why even bother with the New Testament? Primarily because the philosophers have parted company with the New Testament in that “the latter affirms the total incapacity of man to release himself from his fallen state. That deliverance can come only by an act of God.” 63 Hence, Bultmann draws a “crucial distinction between the New Testament and existentialism, between the Christian faith and the natural understanding of Being. The New Testament speaks and faith knows of an act of God through which man becomes capable of self-commitment, capable of faith and love, of his authentic life.”64
Gadamer helps clarify the relationship between Bultmannian existentialism and the philosophy of Heidegger on which he relied so heavily: “If, according to Bultmann, the appeal of the Christian proclamation to man is that he should give up his right to dispose of himself as he chooses, this appeal is like a privative experience of human self-determination. In this way Bultmann has interpreted Heidegger’s concept of the inauthenticity of Dasein in a theological way.” 65 As Kevin J. Vanhoozer explains, the religious quest of Bultmann in exhorting us to read the Bible over and against a non-theological existentialism is that we may truly “learn what possibilities are open to us as human beings.” 66 These possibilities are exemplified by the so-called “eschatological event of Christ.” Harold O. J. Brown comments: “Jesus’ eschatological work consists in making the meaning of our individual existences clear to us in radical honesty. Bultmann believed that the goal of Jesus and his early disciples was only to bring men to a new, authentic self-understanding. Unfortunately – or so it would seem – they expressed this concern in ‘mythological’ language, which was natural for them but is intelligible to us.” 67
Bultmann is convinced that the program of demythologizing “does better justice to the real meaning of the New Testament and to the paradox of the kerygma.” 68 The historic significance of rescuing the kerygma from its mythological shell cannot be overstated: “Our radical attempt to demythologize the New Testament is in fact a perfect parallel to St Paul’s and Luther’s doctrine of justification by faith alone apart from the works of the Law. . . . Like the doctrine of justification it destroys every false security and every false demand for it on the part of man, whether he seeks it in his good works or in his ascertainable knowledge. The man who wishes to believe in God as his God must realize that he has nothing in his hand on which to base his faith.” 69Or to put it another way, just as the Apostle Paul and the Reformer Luther taught that man has no good works on which to base his claim to justification, Bultmann asserts that his program of demythologization accomplishes a similar result. To summarize it in terms of existentialist philosophy, because modern man, due to his scientific worldview, must admit that he has no rational basis for believing the New Testament, demythologization frees him to exercise his faith in a radical abandonment to God and thereby come to understand his “authentic self.”
Whatever significance, however, that Bultmann attaches to the program of demythologization, he recognizes that he is merely carrying on the work already begun by the New Testament writers themselves: “The eschatological preaching of Jesus was retained and continued by the early Christian community in its mythological form. But very soon the process of demythologizing began, partially with Paul, and radically with John.” 70 It follows, therefore, that it was the apostles Paul and John who first sought to smooth out the “rough edges in [the New Testament’s] mythology,” and work out the implications of the various contradictions concerning human life found in the gospels and the “event of Christ.” 71
Harold Brown provides a helpful summary, noting that Bultmann’s “presentation is not a doctrine about anyone or anything: it is instead an urgent appeal to human beings to understand themselves in a new way, on the basis of an encounter with an amazing story, a very interesting one, but one that never actually ‘happened’ in the usual meaning of the word.” 72 Thus, Bultmann could triumphantly claim that his program of demythologization restored to the “Christ event” a permanent redemptive significance not chained to an outmoded and untenable worldview like the one found in the New Testament. 73 The significance of a cosmic event such as the cross is rooted not in its historicity, but the fact that it has “created a new and permanent situation in history.” 74 By systematic demythologization of the text, this “situation,” the act of God whereby the event of Christ exemplifies how man might live an authentic life, is now freed from its mythological framework, making it possible for modern man to arrive at true self-understanding. Thus, antisupernaturalistic demythologization is a hermeneutic methodology aimed directly at a specific goal, that modern man might arrive at an authentic awareness of what it means to exist.
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FOOTNOTES
1:Rudolf Bultmann, Jesus Christ and Mythology (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1958), 83.
2:D. A. Carson, Douglas J. Moo, and Leon Morris, An Introduction to the New Testament (Grand Rapids: Zondervan Publishing House, 1992), 22.
3:Norman L. Geisler, Baker Encyclopedia of Christian Apologetics (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 1999), 517.
4:Geisler, 517.
5:Rudolf Bultmann, Kerygma and Myth: A Theological Debate, ed. Hans Werner Bartsch, trans. Reginald H. Fuller (London: SPCK, 1954), 12.
6:Bultmann, Jesus, 43.
7:Richard E. Palmer, Hermeneutics: Interpretation Theory in Schleiermacher, Dilthey, Heidegger, and Gadamer (Evanston, Indiana: Northwestern University Press, 1969), 49.
8:Ibid.
9:Bultmann, Kerygma, 10.
10:Palmer, 46.
11:Ibid., 50.
12:Bultmann, Jesus, 45.
13:Hans Georg Gadamer, Truth and Method , trans. Joel Weinsheimer and Donald G. Marshall (New York: The Crossroad Publishing Company, 1989), 521.
14:Ibid.
15:Palmer, 49.
16:Ibid.
17:Ibid., 50.
18:Ibid.
19:Bultmann, Kerygma, 25.
20:Ibid.
21:Ibid. , 24-25.
22:Ibid. , 10.
23:Ibid. , 11.
24:Ibid.
25:Ibid. , 3.
26:Palmer, 28.
27:Bultmann, Kerygma, 1-2.
28:Ibid. , 3.
29:Ibid.
30:Ibid. , 34.
31:Ibid.
32:Ibid. , 35.
33:Ibid.
34:Ibid.
35:Ibid., 7.
36:Ibid. , 38.
37:Ibid. , 8.
38:Bultmann, Jesus, 61.
39:Rudolf Bultmann, Faith and Understanding, trans. Louise Pettibone Smith (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1987), 249.
40:Bultmann, Kerygma, 3.
41:Bultmann, Jesus, 35-36.
42:Ibid. , 48.
43:Jean Grondin, Introduction to Philosophical Hermeneutics, trans. Joel Weinsheimer (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994), 92.
44:Bultmann, Jesus, 49-50.
45:Gadamer, 524.
46:Bultmann, Jesus, 50.
47:Ibid. , 53.
48:Bultmann, Kerygma, 192.
49:Gadamer, 524-25.
50:Bultmann, Kerygma, 5-6.
51:Bultmann, Jesus, 55.
52:Bultmann, Kerygma, 18.
53:Ibid.
54:Ibid. , 18-19.
55:Ibid. , 19.
56:Bultmann, Jesus, 40.
57:Bultmann, Kerygma, 20.
58:Ibid. , 28.
59:Ibid. , 21.
60:Ibid. , 24-25.
61:Ibid. , 25.
62:Ibid. , 26-27.
63:Ibid. , 27.
64:Ibid. , 33.
65:Gadamer, 526.
66:Kevin J. Vanhoozer, Is There a Meaning in This Text? (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1998), 155.
67:Harold O. J. Brown, Heresies: Heresy and Orthodoxy in the History of the Church (Peabody: Hendrickson Publishers, 2003), 441.
68:Bultmann, Kerygma, 43.
69:Ibid. , 211.
70:Bultmann, Jesus, 32.
71:Bultmann, Kerygma, 11-12.
72:Brown, 442.
73:Bultmann, Kerygma, 37.
74:Ibid. (Emphasis added )