I. Introduction
The reader may wish to peruse our “Gospels Criticism (Part One)” as a preparatory introduction to this study. Our purpose here is to prayerfully render a critical analysis of Professor Rudolf Bultmann’s New Testament & Mythology (Bultmann|Ogden; Bultmann|bio). We are motivated to do this analysis because contemporary sentiment toward the New Testament in this twenty-first century “New Age” (Fig. 1) resonates in many respects with the perspectives put forth in Bultmann’s text, and so it is our prayer that by God grace and guidance we may by way of this exercise offer a biblical response. In fairness to Bultmann and in the interest of transparency before the reader, we note that we approached the task with an a priori more or less fundamentalist, evangelical, Christian leaning (“Fundamentalism”, “Evangelicalism”).
The seven essays of Rudolf Bultmann under consideration consist of three major themes: (1) mythology and the New Testament, (2) conceptualizations of modern science (“Science”)—particularly in comparison to conceptualizations of the New Testament, and (3) hermeneutics with respect to the Gospel (“Hermeneutics”). Undergirding each theme is a markedly existentialist mindset deriving from a markedly empiricist worldview of truth (“Existentialism”,”Empiricism”).
II. Mythology and the New Testament
That the transcendent God, who is beyond objectifying seeing, would manifest himself in this world in the person of Jesus Christ, in the Jesus of history, which manifestation the New Testament proclaims (Jhn 1:14, 5:37, 10:30, 12:45, 14:9, 17:11, 2Cr 4:6, Phl 2:6, Col 1:15, Hbr 1:3) is the principal paradox of the New Testament proclamation according to Bultmann. Unconvinced of the veracity of this proclamation, he followed the lead of the history of religions school and associated the proclamation specifically, and the New Testament witness to that proclamation in general, with myth [1], particularly that found in some strands of Jewish apocalypticism and that predominant in the Gnostic conceptualization of redemption (Bultmann| Ogden 2; “History of Religions”, “Myth”, “Apocalypticism”, “Gnosticism”). His end purpose, however, was not to follow entirely the precedent of history of religions thought, but rather to break new ground and show that what he deemed to be a mythological world picture of the New Testament is actually a screen that belies the real intent of the proclamation, which intent was to him an address to authentic human “being” (with respect to, and from the perspective of, existentialism’s center-of-reality, which is self) [2]. He believed that through an existentialist reinterpretation of the mythological conceptualization he saw attending the proclamation, both its supposed paradoxes and incredibility to modern people would be understood as natural byproducts of an antiquated world picture—a mythological world picture which communicates and effects by way of objectifying seeing (for example anthropomorphically), and which had run its course and was no longer believable. With interspersed commentary initialed and highlighted in brackets like so: [commentary, A.s.], please consider in this regard the following excerpts from Bultmann’s text:
“[…] there is nothing specifically Christian about the mythical world picture, which is simply the world picture of a time now past that was not yet formed by scientific thinking […] Criticism of the New Testament is simply a given with modern thinking as it has come to us through our history. Experience and control of the world have developed to such an extent through science and technology that no one can or does seriously maintain the New Testament world picture [notice that the very founders of modern science were biblically based thinkers; more on that below with references, A.s.]. What sense does it make to confess today ‘he descended into hell’ or ‘he ascended into heaven’, if the confessor no longer shares the underlying mythical world picture of a three-story world? Such statements can be confessed honestly only if it is possible to divest their truth of the mythological representation in which it is expressed—provided there is such a truth, which is the very thing theology has to ask. No mature person represents God as a being who exists above in heaven [the Bible clearly states that God is spirit (=unconstrained, as expected of deity, Jhn 4:24), and so it only follows that His heaven is incomprehensible by human thinking, and outside human means of measurement; to pass judgment on it then communicates an understanding of the attendant spirit nature reaches of God based purely on reason, and reasonably, therefore, is a questionable judgment; but we have something much better than tentative reason here—by way of continuity in the sequence, based on 2Corinthians 12:2-4, we know that God dwells in a very real heaven (besides His peoples’ “hearts”, which are themselves spirit, in a manner like unto Him)—the following is reasonable for concrete reasons: first heaven=earth atmosphere+inner space, second heaven=the vast reaches of outer space, here–>third heaven= the throne room of Jehovah God which, following the sequence, must lie beyond even the vast reaches of mundane outer space (again 2Cr 12:2-4)—please notice that this is primary-source testimony by Paul, a martyr for his faith, and an exceedingly humble and honest Christian man, and one of the greatest thinkers in human history, A.s.]; in fact, for us there no longer is any ‘heaven’ in the old sense of the word. And just as certainly there is no hell, in the sense of a mythical underworld beneath the ground on which we stand [God only knows where this miserable place is (Luk 16:19ff refers to Hades, a place of torment specially reserved for Godless, even God-disdaining sinners before their final condemnation to an eternity in hell [it is a bitter pill, but yes, a holy God judges Sin]-Mat 5:22, 29-30, 10:28, 11:23, 18:9, 23:15, 2Pe 2:4, Rev 1:18, 6:8, the Lake of Fire—here is hell-Rev 20:13-14), cf. GEHENNA-Strong’s G1067, A.s.]. Thus, the stories of Christ’s descent and ascent are finished, and so is the expectation of the Son of man’s coming on the clouds of heaven and of the faithful’s being caught up to meet him in the air (1Th 4:15ff) [there is no technical difficulty at all here, quite the opposite—“the clouds of heaven” (Paul is referring to the first heaven) make a vast and diffuse boundary with inner space such that the glorified Jesus could “touch down” anywhere here over quite a vast region (“Atmosphere of the Earth”), A.s.]. Also finished by knowledge of the forces and laws of nature [nature=FUSIKOS, “physics”, A.s.] is faith in spirits and demons. […] We cannot use electric lights and radios and, in the event of illness, avail ourselves of modern medical and clinical means and at the same time believe in the spirit and wonder world of the New Testament [this statement is a piece of work (it is not elegant) to be sure; empiricist-motivated skepticism is here leveraged in the direction of Kantian phenomenal reality. The statement denigrates the miraculous (noumenal reality) by confronting the reader with familiar, proven phenomenal reality (radios, electric lights, medicine), then places the same shoulder-to-shoulder with the “spirit and wonder world” of the New Testament, thus not so subtly highlighting the skepticism, to the extent that the reader must associate themselves with said denigration if they wish to maintain or initiate belief in this “spirit and wonder world” of the New Testament (the miracles, the supernatural, the divinity of Jesus, the Holy Spirit); in another sense the statement at least to some degree suggests that technology and the miraculous are mutually exclusive in the domain of belief, which of course they are not; why? because they intersect on the dynamic of faith, A.s.]. And if we suppose that we can do so ourselves, we must be clear that we can represent this as the attitude of Christian faith only by making the Christian proclamation unintelligible and impossible for our contemporaries [specifically, that is, to other empiricist-motivated skeptics, A.s.] […] Interestingly enough, we moderns have the double possibility of understanding ourselves either completely as nature or as spirit as well as nature, in that we distinguish our true selves from nature. In either case, we understand ourselves as unified beings who ascribe their feeling, thinking, and willing to themselves. We do not understand ourselves to be as peculiarly divided as the New Testament represents us, so that alien powers can intervene in our inner life. We ascribe to ourselves an inner unity of states and actions, and we call any person who imagines this unity to be split by the intervention of divine or demonic powers a schizophrenic [thus people who prayed or pray to God for divine intervention for this or that, let’s say, need, for example, are a schizophrenic? And what of Jesus when He prayed, say in Gethsemane (Mat 26:36ff), or in John 17?, A.s.]. Even if we understand ourselves as natural beings dependent to the highest degree, as in biology or psychoanalysis, we do not look upon our dependence as being given over to alien powers from which we distinguish ourselves [he spoke of divine and demonic powers just above, so the alien powers here are God and Satan; moreover in so many words an important issue at hand is temptation (in the negative, satanic application (“Have You Considered My Servant Job?: Spiritual Perturbations,” “A Threefold Test”)—negative here because Satan’s motivation is control [enslavement, for example addiction by way of substance abuse or immorality | pornography]; God does not tempt anyone [Jas 1:13]; God overtly preaches His Gospel by way of His servants [Mat 28:19-20], and is motivated by human rebirth, even freedom from slavery unto Salvation [“John Chapter Three Commentary”; also “A Letter of Invitation” for more background and an invitation for you much-beloved reader]); by very definition, temptation is an external (to self) force; we do not tempt ourselves, someone or something tempts us to perhaps cheat, gossip, be immoral, kill, lie, steal, on it goes; because God is holy, and sovereign (this is axiomatic), He has no inclination nor need of tempting anyone to do anything so what remains are the temptations of Satan, which are evil by association (as the archenemy of God, this too becomes axiomatic)—but, are they real?, is Satan in fact real? Bultmann says no to both questions; instead, Bultmann’s reality here is (autonomous-rationalist) human choice per se, which ultimately manifests as phenomenal reality, which he embraces; temptation—that which motivates choice (noumenal reality), which we argue cannot be of God nor self, he discounts, but it is in fact the salient reality in this context, seeing that phenomenal reality here (manifest choice) follows from the motivation to choose (temptation, noumenal reality); the crux is that dependence given over to, or, controlled by, God (=Good) or Satan (=Evil), stems from such choice, because with choice necessarily attends identification with either God or Satan, which identification through choice is played out by people on a daily basis—here is phenomenal reality for the empiricist-motivated skeptic to consider; and identifying with either God, or Satan, certainly controls one’s life, and thus either God, or Satan, does ultimately control (as in given over to) one’s life, and this then we see proceeding from within (that is where the spiritual | noumenal give-and-take occurs), and works its way outward to the skin, outward to the exercising limbs/members (lips/tongue, fingers, fists, feet, etc.), from where it may spread by association within a group/s, within society, within a nation, within nations, quite phenomenologically, and so this dependence-vector points in the other direction than what Bultmann here claims, A.s.]. Rather, we look upon it as our true being, over which we are in turn able to take dominion by understanding [dearest reader, has your “understanding” allowed you to conquer (to take dominion of) your inner self? Said differently, are you by way of “understanding” a slave to no one or nothing?, that is, a slave to no uncanny power?, A.s.], so that we can rationally organize our life [it is good to rationally organize one’s life, but it does not hold at all that gracious, intervening, sought-after guidance from God via His quite phenomenal Word perverts this, as suggested here; quite the opposite concerning Satan of course, because his motivation is Control, even evil so as to realize that end (Control), A.s.]. If, on the other hand, we understand ourselves as spirits, we do indeed know that we are always conditioned by our physical bodies [personally, if it be allowed to be put that way, my body does not condition my inner self—conditioning, be that as it may, proceeds in the other direction, which puts the emphasis back on spirit, not flesh, A.s.], but we distinguish our true selves from them and know ourselves to be independent and responsible for our dominion over nature [humankind has indeed conquered many aspects of nature (many diseases, we split the atom, probe its fundamental constituents and forces, the frontiers of molecular biology are being pushed back, inner and outer space while yet foreboding are slowly but surely being explored, etc., but…apart from intervention by God, self remains unconquered, as attested by world news on a daily basis (and what are we to say of the myriad secret sins that enslave and oppress people), A.s.]. In both cases what the New Testament has to say about the ‘Spirit’ (PNEUMA) and the sacraments is absolutely alien and unintelligible to us [certainly not to a child of God, but only one thus reborn can attest to that, so we must let this stand right here, unless you would accept our talk and attendant walk before God as evidence here—we, by God’s exceeding grace and mercy, thus reborn, A.s.] […] It is also the case that neither naturalists nor idealists can understand death as the punishment for sin; for them, death is a simple and necessary natural process [here the cart has been placed before the horse if you will: the reason these camps might not understand death as the punishment for sin would be because they disavow God as the Creator of life in the first place, espousing instead Godless, naturalist theories for the origin of life (and death); thus when He, a holy God, of necessity judges Sin—which, apart from being in keeping with His holiness—is His incontestable right as the owner of all life, how can they possibly understand death to be precisely the sentence of this holy God they disavow and accordingly do not endeavor to be educated by?, A.s.]. […] Nor can we understand that in consequence of the guilt of our ancestors we should be condemned to the death of a natural being [this statement is almost to be expected, because Kantian autonomy of human reason is in its (the statement’s) premise offended thrice—by imposition of guilt and again by imposition of condemnation and then all alike again by way of an act (Judgment) that lies outside the phenomenal reality of the autonomous rationalist, which is unacceptable to him; notwithstanding, biblical guilt-propagation-condemnation is accurate by force of identification with the guilt alluded to here, as seen in the various human lineages across the generations (unless someone along the way could step to the fore and show themselves conquerors of their inner self, sinless by God’s [the Judge here] standards); of necessity then the autonomous-rationalist wishes rather, as above, to “distinguish” (even himself) here and not identify with said guilt, A.s.], because we know of guilt only as a responsible [existentialist-responsible that is, and that can be good or evil because the responsible-norm lies within the existentialist—please notice that ”responsible” here signifies “without compromise of Self”—maybe a little out of context, but as Shakespeare through the mouth of the fictional Polonius in Hamlet infers: “…to thine own self be true…”, that sort of thing, A.s.] act and therefore regard original sin, in the sense of a quasi-natural hereditary illness [(?), A.s.], as a submoral and impossible concept [submoral and impossible because the existentialist-responsible-norm lies entirely within the existentialist (existentialism perceives the world “from the inside [of self] out,” something that would no doubt make Albert Schweitzer quite unhappy, A.s.]. Just for this reason we also cannot understand the doctrine of substitutionary atonement through the death of Christ. How can my guilt be atoned for by the death of someone guiltless (assuming one may even speak of such)? [God demands perfection from His people, hardly the invention of humankind, who deems themselves as “good enough” by their own existentialist norms (Mat 5:48); continued just next, A.s.]. What primitive concepts of guilt and righteousness lie behind any such notion? And what primitive concepts of God? [as said, God demands perfection from His people, and obviously this only He can (and did) provide, A.s.]. If what is said about Christ’s atoning death is to be understood in terms of the idea of sacrifice, what kind of primitive mythology is it according to which a divine being who has become man atones with his blood for the sins of humanity? [ditto, A.s.]. Or if it is to be understood in legal terms, so that in the transactions between God and human beings God’s demands are satisfied by the death of Christ, then sin can only be understood jursistically as outward transgression of a divine command, and ethical standards are simply excluded [Divine Justice by definition considers all eventualities, thus precisely it must needs always have preeminence; Divine Justice is found at Calvary, A.s.]. Moreover, if the Christ who suffered death was God’s Son [a vicarious, as said, voluntary death, A.s.], a preexistent divine being, what could it mean to him to assume death? [he left out the suffering part (Isa 52:14, 53:2-5, Mat 26:36-41, 42, 44, Luk 22:39-44), A.s.] […] we moderns cannot understand Jesus’ resurrection as an event whereby a power to live is released that we can now appropriate through the sacraments [more specifically, it was Sin-debt that was released (paid) by Jesus’ death and straightaway affirmed as “paid in full” by His resurrection; the so-called “power to live” here the Bible calls Grace; moreover, the “sacraments” have nothing to do with eternal life—that is a gift freely given by God (=Grace) to all who repent of their sins and follow Jesus Christ as their Lord and Master (“A Letter of Invitation” for more background); the sacraments introduced here are gross error because they give the impression that humankind can follow some ritual-route to redeem themselves, and not least because they translate more to “eternal life by way of works” (doing something other than repenting, and believing in and following Jesus, which is tougher, and calls for more God-given spiritual mettle than the sacrament-route; it is not hard to appreciate therefore that the sacrament-route is highly esteemed by the sinner), A.s.]. For those who think biologically such talk is utterly pointless, because the problem of death does not even arise [perhaps he means by this that death is not a problem for naturalists in that they see it as the natural course of things and thus take it in stride; frankly we have met few people—naturalists or otherwise—for whom death is not a problem (excepting of course the suicidal), A.s.]. And while for idealists it is meaningful to speak of a life that is not subject to death [surely everyone is an idealist here, A.s.], the possibility that such a life should be created by a dead person’s being brought back to physical life is unimaginable [it is hard to catch the rub here—are we not speaking of the death and then the resurrection of Jesus Christ in application to eternal life for the believer in context here (“apples over against apples” as it were)? We simply cannot think of a better primary-source-attested witness pattern than this one to shower needy mortals with blessed hope for eternal life, A.s.]. If God creates life for human beings by any such means, God’s action is evidently tied up with natural occurrences in some completely unintelligible way [no natural occurrences here whatsoever—“evidently” or otherwise; this is an errant statement right out of the gate—God’s action here was a supernatural act (the second law of thermodynamics does not hold here at all—the irreversible made reversible, and quite comprehensively to say the least)—and precisely for this reason it is unintelligible—were it natural, it would in fact be intelligible, and humankind might well indeed figure out the mechanism, but, cancer, heart disease, mortal accidents of one sort or another, aging, and so on, show how helpless and primitive humankind still is here in addressing these, and in need of the intervening divine intelligence (SUNETOS-mental compilation) and divine energy (ERGOS-energy is manifest work) attested by the Resurrection in order to realize eternal life—medicine isn’t getting us there (the best thing going these days, molecular biology, takes three steps backward for every two it manages to go forward owing to the increased complexity discovered at the frontier; and consider the amazing world of quantum mechanics and general relativity—it shows us but a staggering learning curve ahead as we see it), and no guru has got the answers; what God offers here, nay, what God has done here in space and time is terrific news—it is madness to discount this Grace, and it is manifest Sin to discourage others to appropriate it by minimizing and mocking it, A.s.]. We can see God’s act only in an occurrence that enters into the reality of our own true life, transforming us ourselves. But we cannot understand a miraculous natural event such as the resuscitation of a dead man—quite apart from its being generally incredible—as an act of God that is in this sense of concern to us [here is madness, A.s.].” (Bultmann| Ogden 3-7, red font added in this last statement to point out a particular existential conclusion—the thoroughly empiricist basis thereof should be apparent; notice that the red font text has in view Kahler’s icon-subtlety as the vehicle).
So, given the likes of the above, Bultmann determined to reinterpret the proclamation along the lines of what he believed was its real intent, a core truth/s masked by myth, which would at the same time make the Gospel believable for moderns, and to him this called first for “responsible” demythologizing of the proclamation [3], which he understood to be its redress ultimately in the garb of existentialism [4]:
“Therefore, contemporary Christian proclamation is faced with the question whether, when it demands faith from men and women, it expects them to acknowledge this mythical world picture of the past. If this is impossible [as he so concludes, A.s.], it then has to face the question whether the New Testament proclamation has a truth that is independent of the mythical world picture, in which case it would be the task of theology to demythologize the Christian proclamation.” (Bultmann| Ogden 3; red font added to emphasize that precisely an existential Gospel was that truth to Bultmann) […] “If the task of demythologizing was originally called for by the conflict between the mythological world picture of the Bible and the world picture formed by scientific thinking, it soon became evident that demythologizing is a demand of faith itself. For faith insists on being freed from bondage to every world picture projected by objectifying thinking, whether it is the thinking of myth or the thinking of science. The conflict between these two modes of thinking indicates that faith still has not found its appropriate form of expression, that it has not become conscious that it cannot be proved, that it is not clear about the identity of its ground with its object, that it has not clearly grasped the hiddenness and transcendence of divine action, and that, missing the point of its own ‘nevertheless,’ it seeks God’s act within the sphere of what is worldly. By criticizing the mythological world picture of the Bible and of the church’s traditional proclamation, the modern world picture performs the great service for faith of calling it back to radical reflection on its own essence [faith is literally invisible but that does not mean it has no structure, nor even an uncomplicated structure (cf. “Occam’s razor,” where manifest elegance is efficacious simplicity): it simply grows up out of belief, and belief itself rests on facts, the stuff of proofs for empiricists, who may or may not recognize that facts are of God; Christian faith grows up out of belief in the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, thus resurrected shown to be the Son of the living God Jehovah (certainly an act of this great God), which means that for moderns primary-source testimony is needed such that faith may ultimately rest on fact (on the resurrected Jesus Christ) in this application, which testimony God provides, as expected of the Author of Salvation (1Cr 15:2-8, Act 4:11-12, 15:11, Rom 5:9-11, et al.), A.s.]. It is precisely this call that demythologizing seeks to heed [ditto, A.s.].” (Bultmann| Ogden 121-22).
To be clear, as myth Bultmann understood:
“talk of the unworldly as worldly, and the gods as humans.” And, “myth believes that our ground and limit, which lies beyond the familiar, is controlled by uncanny powers, which are its ground and limit.” And again, “the report of an occurrence or an event in which supernatural or superhuman forces or persons are at work.” (Bultmann| Ogden 10).
Two related issues stem from this redress that, left to its own momentum, would radically alter primitive, medieval, and post-Reformation Church salvation-doctrine:
- Through its redress as an existential Gospel, the Prime Mover shifts from the domain of the supernatural, to the domain of the mundane, precisely in line with (or, as required by) empiricist-motivated existentialist thinking [5]. Moreover, the metrics of salvation are no longer tied to a standard, or, better, to a mandate, but rather to philosophical aspirations.
- Clearly Bultmann’s existential Gospel denies the divinity of Jesus Christ. And with this one stroke collapses the entire infrastructure of New Testament Salvation—the hope for a blessed life eternal in fellowship with Jehovah God. In short, there is here not a jot of eternity for humankind—beyond the observable, existent, mundane moment.
III. Conceptualizations of Modern Science
The world picture of modern science and that of the New Testament are quite at odds to Bultmann, as suggested above. Accordingly he held that it is inconceivable for rational, modern [6] people to accept the world picture of the New Testament. He explored the possibility of bringing the world picture of the New Testament, especially that of the Gospel, under the aegis of modern science (Bultmann| Ogden 49) by way of demythologizing the Gospel along the lines of the scientific method on an existential basis. He tested his thesis generally, setting out to show that theology per se is a science (Bultmann| Ogden 65-7 summarizes this), and that no science is possible without the subject’s existential life relation to the field of objects under study (Bultmann| Ogden 46f). To Bultmann science is a disclosure of a field of objects in space and time through justified statements by an impartial subject. And theology is science in that “it stands over against its object,” which is God. God, however, cannot be objectified, thus the object of Bultmann’s theology (God) defers to faith in God by way of a peculiar existentialist “coming to know God,” which knowing (an observable) can be objectified, and so in his thinking theology becomes, ultimately, the science of a peculiar existentialist faith (difficulties are surfacing here for Bultmann though in that faith is certainly not phenomenal, in contrast to the scientific method which works only with phenomenal reality). Seeing that only the consequences of faith are phenomenal, he leaned on Kahler’s icon-subtlety to cross this Lessing-like-ditch (“lessing’s big ditch” stated is the problem of proving metaphysical truth by way of uncertain historical assessments—here the “ditch” separates faith and phenomenon, “Lessing”). In New Testament theology, specifically that of the Gospel, such faith in God, to Bultmann, is grounded in the eschatological act of God [7], which, to him, is not evident in history (because it is at any time hence always an unobservable), but rather is evinced through the proclamation (enter Kahler’s icon-subtlety), which in turn evokes faith, “Christian faith” (the substance of which is but a story here; the supernatural element is stripped away by Bultmann). The point is that the proclamation (the supposed faith-engendering icon Jesus [the kerygmatic Story], not the divine, efficacious Savior Jesus per se in this thesis), through which comes Christian faith, must be “secured” [8].
But the premise is amiss here, and much cerebral effort follows only to complicate and debase an elegant Salvation—it is not true that the world picture of modern science and that of the New Testament are at odds. Nor is it true that the modern hearer is unable to deduce the soundness and timeless relevance of the profound ancient New Testament text. Both points can be demonstrated by the fact that the very founders of modern science, and innumerable others since, espoused/espouse the Gospel, and were moved to Christian faith by it through the timeless Worker, even the Inspirer of the same, the Spirit of God Jehovah—and this by their own testimony: “There have been leading scientists in every field of science who have studied both the Bible and their own scientific disciplines in depth, and who are firmly convinced the two are fully compatible.” (Morris 3). The scientists of note nine comprise a short list of some of these leading scientists.
To Bultmann the problem of hermeneutics is hearing the claims of the text, where such hearing comes by way of understanding, and understanding by way of the exegete’s existential life relation to the subject matter [10]. It is not hard to appreciate that the exegete’s existential life relation to the subject matter relativizes the meaning of the same (from one exegete to the next and even for a given exegete from one life relation moment to another), and thus relativizes understanding. We hold instead that the biblical texts are not ordinary mundane texts, having been inspired by Jehovah God (many of these texts are prophetic, and by way of fulfilled prophecy lend support to the argument of inspiration [2Ti 3:16, “The Alpha and the Omega”]), and are thus not amenable to mundane ideas of how meaning is derived: meaning in the biblical texts is (1) derived by grace, (2) by the servant of God the Inspirer, (3) as deemed apropos by, (4) God the Inspirer, who (5) unambiguously reveals His intended meaning (6) to His servants, (7) and to none other. Many readers come to the sacred text both unconvinced of its inspiration and in a spirit of nonservanthood, and thus the blessing of understanding cannot follow. Bultmann holds moreover that since this life relation guides exegesis, no exegesis is possible without presuppositions, a subjectivity based not on personal interests, but on experiential understanding. Out of the exegete’s life relation to the subject matter then, issues a given questioning of the text, from which said understanding is supposedly derived [11]. By points (1) through (7) just above we disagree. Notwithstanding, in this way Bultmann differs from Wilhelm Dilthey (“Dilthey”) and others who endeavored to interpret texts by understanding as completely as possible the persona and motivations of the author [12], a near impossible task as we see it. But here again, God inspired His text, and He communicates its meaning to His servants—both ends of the “communicative pipeline” (servant-authors past, servant-readers present), through which flows the living Water, the Word of God, even the Inspirer Himself, contain a “gate-valve-of-servanthood” if you will, and these “valves” must be open to servitude (like unto the Servant [Phl 2:5-8], the very One served), itself (servitude) the key to hearing the claims of the text, and thus it is servitude, by this spirit, through which meaning is derived, and so in this way the living Water “passes through” generations of servants, sparkling, clear. Of course an analogy such as this flies in the face of empiricist-motivated existentialists such as Bultmann. Some excerpts that reveal this “face” (mindset), with interspersed commentary, as above:
“[…] every text speaks in the language of its time and of its historical setting […] while, for example, the Old Testament narrative talks about God’s intervention in history, the science of history cannot assert such an act of God but perceives only that there are those who believe in God and in God’s action [we hold that interpretation of the Bible is the wrong place for applied science because (1) regarding the Bible, its empiricist-motivated reductions leave the sacred text “pale,” “sterile,” lacking the inherent divine element of which it fundamentally consists, and (2) regarding science, science (scientific knowing) needs phenomenal reality with which to work—science is aptly the domain of the empiricist, A.s.]. To be sure, as the science of history it may not assert that such faith is an illusion and that there is no act of God in history. But as science it cannot itself perceive such an act and proceed as though such had occurred; it can only leave everyone free to decide whether he or she wants to see an act of God in a historical event that it itself understands in terms of the event’s immanent historical causes [E. Troeltsch (cf. “Gospels Criticism (Part One)”, A.s.]. It is in accordance with such a method that the science of history goes to work on all historical documents. There can be no exceptions in the case of the biblical texts if they are to be understood at all historically. Nor can one object that the biblical writings do not intend to be historical documents but rather are witnesses of faith and proclamation. Of course they are. But if they are ever to be understood as such, they must first be interpreted historically, because they speak in a strange language, in concepts of a faraway time, of a world picture that is alien to us [he speaks of faith here but not specifically of sustainable faith: the New Testament in particular is a witness to the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, and this is plainly recorded in the Gospel, and is that which is proclaimed; it is hard to see how a science-of-history-interpretation of that record, and in such a dress proclaimed, might engender sustained faith in the same seeing that historical judgments become more uncertain as time passes—these “bruised reeds” are hardly the foundation of sustainable faith—and yet somehow Christian faith rolled like a tsunami, sustained, for millennia; now it is intuitively obvious that sustained faith is founded on unequivocal fact/s such that the judgments of history passed along must needs remain certain—such is the quality of unequivocal facts, and it is certainly reasonable to believe that the sustained Christian faith here mentioned is founded on such facts, themselves the primary-source testimony concerning the Gospel record (we have in mind Jesus’ resurrection in particular) at the time when Christianity unfolded early on (“Early Christendom”), specifically therewith gaining momentum, and that in this way the Inspirer of the text and the Agent of the record (Jehovah God) can be argued to be behind it from first to last—how? (1) unequivocal facts that garner (2) millennia-long sustained faith (3) at the scale of the world ‘s population, are not particular to humankind; as concerns the Old Testament, it can be shown to be centered on this resurrected Jesus (Mcgee passim) and to foreshadow not least His first advent and redemptive | salvific ministry—and that is all that matters in that context, keeping in mind the “big picture” of Scripture which, hands down, is Redemption | Salvation (=eternal fellowship with Jehovah God, even the great desire of His blessed heart); maybe this is a good place to say a word about the so-called “difficulty of hermeneutics” as concerns the biblical texts—there is no difficulty, if secular-science-thinking is left out of the mix, and prayerful focus is placed upon meaning with respect to the centerpiece of Scripture, even Jesus; finally, concerning the reference to a “strange language” and “faraway place” please see the mythology comments above, A.s.]. Simply put, they must be translated, and translation is the work of the science of history. If we speak of translation, however, we are faced at once with the hermeneutical problem [also referred to as the “hermeneutic circle,” that is, one cannot appreciate the whole without understanding its parts, yet at the same time one cannot appreciate the parts without understanding the whole, but not so with the biblical texts because the parts and the whole intersect elegantly in Jesus Christ, a significant case in point in the general “attestation of fulfilled prophecy,” which prophecy is all about this great savior God, A.s.]. To translate means to make understandable, and this presupposes an understanding. The understanding of history as a continuum of causes and effects [E. Troeltsch (cf. “Gospels Criticism (Part One)”, A.s.] presupposes an understanding of the effective forces that connect individual phenomena. Such forces are economic needs, social exigencies, the striving for political power, human passions, ideas and ideals [it is the purpose of the Gospel to isolate these forces and expose where appropriate the Sin (=offense to God) at their root—in other words, the Gospel views these forces from a Sin-perspective and translation of the biblical texts must follow in kind, A.s.]. Historians differ in assessing such factors [this only follows if the common root of Sin is not identified and considered here, A.s.], and in any effort to achieve a unified view the individual historian is guided by a particular way of asking questions, some particular perspective. This does not mean a falsification of the historical picture, provided that the perspective that is presupposed is not a prejudice but a way of asking questions [hardly much difference from first (falsification) to last (prejudice over against “a way of asking questions”), A.s.], and that the historian is aware that this way of asking questions is one-sided in questioning the phenomenon or the text from this one particular perspective [even in the face of honesty with self vis-a-vis a one-sided questioning of the text as implied, one-sidedness is a hermeneutical problem whether in assessing history or otherwise, A.s.]. The historical picture is falsified only when a particular way of asking questions is taken to be the only one [there is possibly an implication of the biblical texts here; also, what is the difference between “one-sidedness” just above, and “the only one” here?, A.s.] […] if history is to be understood at all, some particular way of asking questions is always presupposed. Furthermore, the forces that are effective in connecting are understandable only if the phenomena themselves, which are connected thereby, are also understood. This means that an understanding of the subject matter itself belongs to historical understanding. […] In short, historical understanding presupposes an understanding of the subject matter of history itself and of the men and women who act in history. That is to say, however, that historical understanding always presupposes that the interpreter has a relation to the subject matter that is (directly or indirectly) expressed in the text. This relation is grounded in the life context in which the interpreter stands [see near the top where he spoke of the exegete’s life relation to the text and hearing its claims/understanding, A.s.] […] one must say that a historical event can be known for what it is—precisely as a historical event—only in the future. And one may also say that the future of a historical event belongs to it […] what a historical event means always becomes clear only in the future, It can show itself definitively only when history has come to an end [the historical event of the Cross, on the other hand, shows itself definitively already before the event (in the Old Testament-prophetically-Isa 53:1ff-eight centuries before, “Isaiah Chapter Fifty-three Commentary,” Psa 22:1ff-eleven centuries before, “Psalm Twenty-two Commentary,” two different (clearly inspired) authors quite separated in time), through the instant of the event (prophecy fulfilled-Jhn 19:30-first-century AD), even until the consummation of history (all prophecy fulfilled-Rev 22:12-13), A.s] […] What are the consequences of this analysis for the biblical writings? It may be formulated in the following theses:
- The exegesis of biblical writings, like any other interpretation of a text, must be unprejudiced.
- However, the exegesis is not without presuppositions, because as historical interpretation it presupposes the method of historical-critical research [we think he means presuppositions such as these: “(1) that reality is uniform and universal, (2) that reality is accessible to human reason and investigation, (3) that all events historical and natural are interconnected and comparable to analogy, (4) that humanity’s contemporary experience of reality can provide objective criteria to what could or could not have happened in past events.” (“Historical Criticism”). But applied science, even the so-called science of history, as a vehicle of exegesis for specifically the biblical texts is ill-advised for reasons mentioned earlier, continued just next, A.s.].
- Further presupposed is the exegete’s life relation to the subject matter with which the Bible is concerned and therewith a preunderstanding [by preunderstanding he means (the ultimate influence of) some prior understanding with respect to some particular understanding of human existence—he is “splitting hairs” here—clearly preunderstanding if it may be distinguished from some subsequent more profound understanding/s is also instilled by the Inspirer of the sacred text who alone derives its meaning to His servants—the argument of inspiration as above holds here: given inspired authorship, borne out by fulfilled prophecy, meaning in the biblical texts is (1) derived by grace, (2) by the servant of God the inspirer, (3) as deemed apropos by, (4) God the Inspirer, who (5) unambiguously reveals His intended meaning (6) to His servants, (7) and to none other, A.s.].
- This preunderstanding is not closed but open, so that there can be an existential encounter with the text and an existential decision [ditto, A.s.].
- Understanding of the text is never definitive but rather remains open because the meaning of scripture discloses itself anew in every future [ditto; moreover, please notice that meaning, like God, is quite noumenal (of course God is phenomenal in the incarnate Jesus Christ), and is therefore exactly stable, by definition; it only follows that understanding of the biblical texts is exactly definitive per the ditto, A.s.].” (Bultmann| Ogden 147-51).
Our purpose in this study was to prayerfully render a critical analysis of Professor Rudolf Bultmann’s New Testament & Mythology And Other Basic Writings. We were motivated to do this analysis because contemporary sentiment toward the New Testament in this twenty-first century “New Age” (Fig. 1) resonates in many respects with the perspectives Professor Bultmann put forth in his text; we hoped that by God’s grace and guidance we might by way of this study offer a biblical response.
The seven essays considered consisted of three major themes, which were the basis and subject matter of the study:
- mythology and the New Testament,
- conceptualizations of modern science,
- hermeneutics with respect to the Gospel.
The principal paradox of the New Testament according to Bultmann is that the transcendent God, who is beyond objectifying seeing, would manifest himself in this world in the person of Jesus Christ. This we think is principal because without this relationship to God, everything else about the proclamation concerning a divine Jesus is of necessity called into question (His resurrection for example). Unconvinced of the veracity of this proclamation, he followed the lead of the history of religions school and associated the proclamation specifically, and the New Testament witness to that proclamation in general, with myth, particularly that found in some strands of Jewish apocalypticism and that predominant in the Gnostic conceptualization of redemption. He believed that through an existentialist reinterpretation of the mythological conceptualization he saw attending the proclamation, both its supposed paradoxes and incredibility to modern people would be understood as natural byproducts of an antiquated world picture—a mythological world picture which communicates and effects by way of objectifying seeing (anthropomorphisms, imagery, stories, that which makes phenomenal the noumenal), and which had run its course and was no longer believable. He explored the possibility of demythologizing the Gospel—stripping away the myth (objectifying), to uncover core truth. Demythologizing here was to proceed “responsibly,” and this meant “detachedly,” and thus along the lines of the apparently objective scientific method (enter form criticism, literary criticism, historical criticism).
In the process of doing this, the Gospel became, ultimately, the science of a peculiar existential faith. In New Testament theology, specifically that of the Gospel, such faith in God, to Bultmann, is grounded in the eschatological act of God (somehow in and through a non-divine Jesus), which, to him, was not evident in history (because it is at any time hence always an unobservable), but rather is evinced through the proclamation (enter Kahler’s icon-subtlety), which in turn evokes faith, “Christian faith” (the substance of which is but a story here, and is ever the existential “eschatological now”). Bultmann saw in this icon-subtlety the vehicle for an existential Gospel.
To Bultmann the problem of hermeneutics is hearing the claims of the text, where such hearing comes by way of understanding, and understanding by way of the exegete’s existential life relation to the subject matter. We thought that the exegete’s existential life relation to the subject matter relativizes the meaning of the same (from one exegete to the next and even for a given exegete from one life relation moment to another), and thus relativizes understanding. We said that that the biblical texts are not ordinary mundane texts, having been inspired by Jehovah God (with many of these texts being prophetic, and by way of fulfilled prophecy lending support to the argument of inspiration), and are thus not amenable to mundane ideas of how meaning is derived. We offered the following in this regard: meaning in the biblical texts is (1) derived by grace, (2) by the servant of God the Inspirer, (3) as deemed apropos by, (4) God the Inspirer, who (5) unambiguously reveals His intended meaning (6) to His servants, (7) and to none other. We thought that many readers come to the sacred text both unconvinced of its inspiration and in a spirit of nonservanthood, and that is why the blessing of understanding does follow (as evinced by substantially different takes on the same passage/s by such readers for example). Moreover Bultmann held that since this life relation guides exegesis, no exegesis is possible without presuppositions, a subjectivity he said was not based on personal interests, but on experiential understanding, and that out of the exegete’s life relation to the subject matter then, issued a given questioning of the text, from which said understanding is supposedly derived. We disagreed by points (1) through (7) just above; our guiding principle here is that God inspired His text, and He communicates its meaning to His servants—where servanthood (this spirit) is the key to deriving meaning, because (1) a servant is like unto God the Inspirer of the biblical texts in heart, mind, and spirit, (2) is teachable, and (3) is quite willing to do what they are told to do—take away any one of these three servant-based fundamentals-to-deriving-meaning, and the meaning derived becomes relative.
Rudolf Bultmann’s goal of demythologizing the New Testament was misguided. The reason for this is that rational modern people of any given period in the Christian era have been fully capable of understanding that God’s historical encounter with humanity [13] is fixed in time, and thus necessarily frozen in the ambiance of that day. Moreover, they understand that the transcendent God, omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent, could best communicate His will, indeed His essence, to humans limited in knowledge, and power, and constrained in space, through human conceptualizations by way of identification, and so the ambiance that is communicated in the text is understandably very human. Bultmann’s apparent motivation for demythologizing—to uncover core truth, and to make the New Testament text believable for modern people—underestimates the intelligence and spiritual vision of modern people (for example, the founders of modern science, who were believers, did not require a demythologized Gospel to come to faith in the claims of the Gospel, thus recognizing the core Truth in the ancient text in its untampered form). More importantly, and tragically, it belittles God’s salvific methodology, not only through its reinterpretation along the lines of superficial (a story missing the divine element) existential basis of faith, but particularly by its disdain for the Gospel; specifically, by its disdain for the juristic, blood atoning death of Jesus Christ the Son of God for sinners, in which place Bultmann put his version of the Gospel.
Praised be your Name great Jehovah God, even you, who reigns in my heart, and graciously speaks to my mind…