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New Testament Mythology and Other Basic Writings
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192 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1941
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Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
March 27, 2021
We read a great deal of Bultmann in seminary. I appreciated his scholarship as regards the exegeses of Christian texts but never really thought about his own acceptation of the tradition. This book, however, is for the most part precisely about that.
Demythologization, recognizing, in other words, that the thought world of the ancients was radically different than ours and acknowledging that our own sciences have constituted a far superior world picture, is Bultmann's starting point. That is clear enough. His end point, his specifically 'Christian' faith, however, is less clear to me unless its very specificity be abandoned, something he emphatically rejects.
What Bultmann is trying to do is comparable to what Kant did in attempting to maintain the rigors of science on the one hand, while postulating the radical freedom of the will on the other--a distinction that might be pointed to in terms of that obtaining between phenomenal objects and one or more noumenal subjects. Bultmann never defines what he means by 'God' but I suspect it is something like the noumenal subject as the Logos (itself associating with biblical texts, the prologue to John and to Logos theologies) behind or beneath all things apprehensible to us as subjects. It's a pity, though, that Bultmann does not relate his thinking explicitly to philosophy which might help me in understanding him. It is a pity also, I think, that he doesn't evince much respect for non-western thinking about such matters as concern him, matters soteriological, eschatological, ethical, etc.
Demythologization, recognizing, in other words, that the thought world of the ancients was radically different than ours and acknowledging that our own sciences have constituted a far superior world picture, is Bultmann's starting point. That is clear enough. His end point, his specifically 'Christian' faith, however, is less clear to me unless its very specificity be abandoned, something he emphatically rejects.
What Bultmann is trying to do is comparable to what Kant did in attempting to maintain the rigors of science on the one hand, while postulating the radical freedom of the will on the other--a distinction that might be pointed to in terms of that obtaining between phenomenal objects and one or more noumenal subjects. Bultmann never defines what he means by 'God' but I suspect it is something like the noumenal subject as the Logos (itself associating with biblical texts, the prologue to John and to Logos theologies) behind or beneath all things apprehensible to us as subjects. It's a pity, though, that Bultmann does not relate his thinking explicitly to philosophy which might help me in understanding him. It is a pity also, I think, that he doesn't evince much respect for non-western thinking about such matters as concern him, matters soteriological, eschatological, ethical, etc.
September 16, 2014
Wow. This book might have just changed my life. It's the first theological work I've read that attempts seriously to reconcile an intellectually honest appraisal of the world as it's presently understood with the miracle language of the Bible. His isn't a perfect system, by any means (his method of demythologizing the New Testament does not adequately reckon with anecdotal evidence of contemporary supernatural experience, for one), but it provides a way for those who struggle with the notion of the miraculous in a world of scientific naturalism yet still want to maintain something resembling real faith.
December 15, 2019
Like many of my recent reviews, this gets 3 stars because of its importance, not because I think its content deserves it. Bultmann's project was to reinterpret the NT for the modern scientific age in a way that would resonate with the 'modern self-understanding'. This means the NT must be 'demythologized' and 'deobjectivized', stripped of it so-called mythological elements (which are a way of speaking of spiritual or other-worldly truths as this-worldly concrete images and historical events, thus objectivizing them) so that the timeless truths that of God's works might be seen as the spiritual events they are, to the eyes of faith. Miracles are jettisoned (including the resurrection) but the cross is retained and is central as the "Christ event". It is a project of individual existentialist interpretation of Scripture, a version of the 'kernel and husk' project of German liberal theology. Had to read this for a class on modern Protestant thought.
People really must read this and try to understand it for themselves before rolling their eyes and dismissing it outright. I was amazed to realize just how much of modern 'conservative' OT biblical interpretation follows somewhat along these lines, where the events recorded in OT Scripture are not concrete historical events but are mythical ways of expressing significant truths for Israel. Genre allowances accepted (there is a time and place in the text for doing this - perhaps references to ANE mythical creatures that YHWH tames, or gods he defeats in combat, for two examples), there are a lot of events that have been universally understood to have been history which many recent scholars simply categorize as expressions of the significance of a religious truth couched in mythical language.
People really must read this and try to understand it for themselves before rolling their eyes and dismissing it outright. I was amazed to realize just how much of modern 'conservative' OT biblical interpretation follows somewhat along these lines, where the events recorded in OT Scripture are not concrete historical events but are mythical ways of expressing significant truths for Israel. Genre allowances accepted (there is a time and place in the text for doing this - perhaps references to ANE mythical creatures that YHWH tames, or gods he defeats in combat, for two examples), there are a lot of events that have been universally understood to have been history which many recent scholars simply categorize as expressions of the significance of a religious truth couched in mythical language.
December 10, 2019
Genius
April 3, 2015
Rudolf Bultmann deserves much more attention. The bad rap he gets for his project of demythologization (if he is mentioned at all in conservative circles) is entirely unjustified. I’ve just been reading his “New Testament & Mythology and Other Basic Writings” and can only say that, while I don’t subscribe to Bultmann’s demythologization, I’m deeply impressed.
Here is a theologian with a deep understanding of the problems of modernity, the hermeneutical problem, and the relationship between science and theology. Who can possibly disagree with Bultmann’s careful presentation of the scientific nature of theology as an objectifying discourse with a method and objective appropriate to its own subject matter? Who can argue with his sophisticated ideas on hermeneutics as not only the science of understanding following certain rules of grammatical interpretation, and not only the discipline of getting a grip on the psychological state of the original writer, but foremost as an attempt to get at that which both interpreter and writer have in common, namely a concern with human existence. Indeed, this commonality is the sine qua non of hermeneutics.
Even Bultmann's program of demythologization deserves a closer look. Aren’t all of us engaged in demythologization when we attempt to go behind the facts of the Christ-event to arrive at the true symbolic meaning of these events contextualized for today? The right way of constructing theology would in my opinion arrive at symbolic meaning without doing violence to the concreteness of the 'resurrection of the Son of God.' But that does not mean that the intention behind demythologization should be utterly rejected. Bultmann is utterly serious in his attempt to do justice to the reality of God. For him to take the ‘mythological’ as historical is tantamount to drawing God into the world with its closed causal system and this the modern human can no longer do. But that does not mean that there is no real encounter with God in Christ through the Spirit for Bultmann. For him there is only salvation in Jesus Christ. A purely human analysis of human existence can only get us to a certain understanding of the problem but not at the solution. For this is the free gift of God in Jesus Christ.
I do not follow Bultmann’s demythologization project because I do not think demythologization is possible ever. For Bultmann, science and myth are opposite ways of looking at the world. In my opinion, however, even though there is a stark difference between science an myth, there are strong commonalities as well. Both are part of the attempts to explain human origins and the meaning of human existence; both use the best instruments of their time available to do so. Because this is so, science is simply a modern myth. Science is the myth we live by because it has better eplanatory power of the world in which we live than the old myths had. Since, however, it is limited to the material world we inhabit, it is less able to provide us with meaning and purpose. Since modern times myth/religion has been split in two parts: fact and meaning. Whether this is a happy separation remains to be seen. As myth, science is always a provisional way of explaining those things that are beyond the horizon of human knowledge.
All Bultmann’s project can achieve, then, is no more than remythologization rather than demythologization. There is merely a redescription according to the rules of the modern myth, or as it is sometimes called, ‘modern dogma,’ in which fact and value have been split. The ‘myth’ of redemption in Jesus Christ is made to conform to the myth of science's closed system of cause and effect. In my opinion this results in a loss of the concreteness of the Christ-event. It is a unnecessary surrender to the modern myth. And why would we do so, when the myth’s of modernity themselves are not final but merely a transitional stage to new myths, whatever shape or form they will take?
While Bultmann’s existential analysis along Heideggerian lines is powerful, there is absolutely no reason why it should be the only thing we can talk about in the kerygma. As Bonhoeffer pointed out, the myth of the Christ-event is the very thing that cannot be distilled into any further derivative. In Bultmann’s demythologization the mythical worldview of ancient times is exchanged in favor of the myth of science. Behind both, however, stands the concreteness of the person of Christ. Christ and Easter are non-reductive. That is the real hope for the modern human being.
Here is a theologian with a deep understanding of the problems of modernity, the hermeneutical problem, and the relationship between science and theology. Who can possibly disagree with Bultmann’s careful presentation of the scientific nature of theology as an objectifying discourse with a method and objective appropriate to its own subject matter? Who can argue with his sophisticated ideas on hermeneutics as not only the science of understanding following certain rules of grammatical interpretation, and not only the discipline of getting a grip on the psychological state of the original writer, but foremost as an attempt to get at that which both interpreter and writer have in common, namely a concern with human existence. Indeed, this commonality is the sine qua non of hermeneutics.
Even Bultmann's program of demythologization deserves a closer look. Aren’t all of us engaged in demythologization when we attempt to go behind the facts of the Christ-event to arrive at the true symbolic meaning of these events contextualized for today? The right way of constructing theology would in my opinion arrive at symbolic meaning without doing violence to the concreteness of the 'resurrection of the Son of God.' But that does not mean that the intention behind demythologization should be utterly rejected. Bultmann is utterly serious in his attempt to do justice to the reality of God. For him to take the ‘mythological’ as historical is tantamount to drawing God into the world with its closed causal system and this the modern human can no longer do. But that does not mean that there is no real encounter with God in Christ through the Spirit for Bultmann. For him there is only salvation in Jesus Christ. A purely human analysis of human existence can only get us to a certain understanding of the problem but not at the solution. For this is the free gift of God in Jesus Christ.
I do not follow Bultmann’s demythologization project because I do not think demythologization is possible ever. For Bultmann, science and myth are opposite ways of looking at the world. In my opinion, however, even though there is a stark difference between science an myth, there are strong commonalities as well. Both are part of the attempts to explain human origins and the meaning of human existence; both use the best instruments of their time available to do so. Because this is so, science is simply a modern myth. Science is the myth we live by because it has better eplanatory power of the world in which we live than the old myths had. Since, however, it is limited to the material world we inhabit, it is less able to provide us with meaning and purpose. Since modern times myth/religion has been split in two parts: fact and meaning. Whether this is a happy separation remains to be seen. As myth, science is always a provisional way of explaining those things that are beyond the horizon of human knowledge.
All Bultmann’s project can achieve, then, is no more than remythologization rather than demythologization. There is merely a redescription according to the rules of the modern myth, or as it is sometimes called, ‘modern dogma,’ in which fact and value have been split. The ‘myth’ of redemption in Jesus Christ is made to conform to the myth of science's closed system of cause and effect. In my opinion this results in a loss of the concreteness of the Christ-event. It is a unnecessary surrender to the modern myth. And why would we do so, when the myth’s of modernity themselves are not final but merely a transitional stage to new myths, whatever shape or form they will take?
While Bultmann’s existential analysis along Heideggerian lines is powerful, there is absolutely no reason why it should be the only thing we can talk about in the kerygma. As Bonhoeffer pointed out, the myth of the Christ-event is the very thing that cannot be distilled into any further derivative. In Bultmann’s demythologization the mythical worldview of ancient times is exchanged in favor of the myth of science. Behind both, however, stands the concreteness of the person of Christ. Christ and Easter are non-reductive. That is the real hope for the modern human being.
May 27, 2013
Word soup. That's the first thing that comes to mind in regards to Bultmann's philosophy, or theology, I guess. Three stars for effort, but I can't shake my head enough after having read this memorable quote on page 114. Memorable not because it's correct, or that I agree with it, but because of the silliness of it.
"Certainly, faith in its relation to its object is not provable. But as Herrmann already taught us, the fact that faith cannot be proved is precisely its strength. To claim that faith could be proved would imply that God could be known and established outside of faith and thus put God on the same level as the available world that can be disposed of by an objectifying view. Of course within the world it is appropriate to demand that things be proved."
Come again? The fact that faith cannot be proved is a strength? No, that's precisely it's weakness! By attempting to make theology a "science", one simply overlooks theology's implicit ambiguity and it's inability to be verified. Verification and falsifiability is exactly what makes the scientific method work. Yes, you can use the term "science" in whatever manner you want, but I think it's pulling a fast one to take the word and apply it in the domain of subjectivity. Which of course is all theology is. This assumption in the quote also completely fails to take into account the interpreter of the god. Who of course is subject to objective evaluation. When you use the method that is being applied here, you've ultimately proven everything and anything.
This is why I don't do theology! I'll stick to Bultmann's textual studies.
"Certainly, faith in its relation to its object is not provable. But as Herrmann already taught us, the fact that faith cannot be proved is precisely its strength. To claim that faith could be proved would imply that God could be known and established outside of faith and thus put God on the same level as the available world that can be disposed of by an objectifying view. Of course within the world it is appropriate to demand that things be proved."
Come again? The fact that faith cannot be proved is a strength? No, that's precisely it's weakness! By attempting to make theology a "science", one simply overlooks theology's implicit ambiguity and it's inability to be verified. Verification and falsifiability is exactly what makes the scientific method work. Yes, you can use the term "science" in whatever manner you want, but I think it's pulling a fast one to take the word and apply it in the domain of subjectivity. Which of course is all theology is. This assumption in the quote also completely fails to take into account the interpreter of the god. Who of course is subject to objective evaluation. When you use the method that is being applied here, you've ultimately proven everything and anything.
This is why I don't do theology! I'll stick to Bultmann's textual studies.
December 10, 2012
This book is an amazing introduction to Rudolf Bultmann's works. I recommend, before you read this, to read his essay "What Does It Mean To Speak Of God?" first, as it, basically, contains most of Bultmann's thought explicated throughout this book. I think Bultmann is a must read for anyone studying philosophy or theology, but especially theology. He takes Martin Heidegger's existential analysis of man and applies it to Christian faith and talks, in length, on the problems of language--How can we speak about God if God is the all inclusive point of reality? It seems to assume some standpoint outside of God from which one can stand. He concludes that one can only speak of God if one must--although all talk about God is objectifying (and existential realities don't stand still to be objectified). Although his philosophical theology seems incomplete without Charles Hartshorne's dipolar theism, it is imperative for any student interested in modern theological studies. Highly recommend.
July 28, 2015
Terrible Way to Read Scripture
Bultmann reads Scripture by assuming an existential worldview. The results are that he denies the supernatural as an actual thing and, as such, labels all of it as myth that requires demythologizing to understand properly. One of the problems with this way of reading Scripture is that it violates the very worldview that Scripture teaches.
Bultmann reads Scripture by assuming an existential worldview. The results are that he denies the supernatural as an actual thing and, as such, labels all of it as myth that requires demythologizing to understand properly. One of the problems with this way of reading Scripture is that it violates the very worldview that Scripture teaches.
April 27, 2013
When I say read...I mean I read three of the essays and that is all I will do here. Bultmann is enjoyable to read and very clear in his argumentation. However, I can't say that I find his program all that realistic or convincing.
August 27, 2014
some good essays, some so so.
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews