Rudolf Bultmann Quotes

“Among the theologians of the Confessing Church who early on took Bultmann’s side in the debate over demythologizing was Dietrich Bonhoeffer. In 1942 he declared the commentary on John and the Alpirsbach lecture to be among the most important recent theological publications,269 and expressed his pleasure that with his venture Bultmann had begun an intellectually honest discussion of a problem that many had suppressed. In Asmussen and Dilschneider’s “arrogance” and the “Pharisaism of belief” Bonhoeffer saw “a real disgrace for the Confessing Church.”270 To be sure, he could not endorse Bultmann’s position completely. “I would like to speak with Bultmann about this, and I would like to expose myself to the breeze that emanates from him. But then the window will have to be closed again. Otherwise, those who are delicate will too easily catch a chill.”271 Later, during his imprisonment in Tegel, Bonhoeffer came to think that Bultmann had not gone far enough, and that it was necessary to subject not only mythological but all religious concepts to a nonreligious interpretation.272”
― Hammann Konrad, Rudolf Bultmann: a Biography

“Not only the New Testament worldview, but also its presentation of the salvation-occurrence is mythical. The motifs it employs in so doing are taken from the contemporaneous “mythology of Jewish apocalyptic and of the Gnostic myth of redemption.”243”
― Hammann Konrad, Rudolf Bultmann: a Biography

“The historical Jesus . . . does not make any direct demand on us, nor does he condemn us for any deed we have committed against him. . . . I have done him no wrong and there is nothing for which he has to forgive me.255 I have never yet felt uncomfortable with my critical radicalism; to the contrary, I have been entirely comfortable. But I often have the impression that my conservative New Testament colleagues feel very uncomfortable, for I see them perpetually engaged in salvage operations. I calmly let the fire burn, for I see that what is consumed is only the fanciful portraits found in life-of-Jesus theology, and that is precisely the Christos kata sarka [Christ according to the flesh]. But the Christos kata sarka is no concern of ours. How things looked in the heart of Jesus I do not know and do not want to know.256”
― Hammann Konrad, Rudolf Bultmann: a Biography

“syncretistic religion and declared that the Palestinian-Hellenistic”
― Hammann Konrad, Rudolf Bultmann: a Biography

“Still, among the critics of the concept of collective guilt, Bultmann was one of the few who spoke of a collective responsibility of the German people towards Judaism. “There certainly is a collective responsibility, however, in which the innocent takes upon himself the guilt of the guilty. Whoever is a German is liable for what was done to the Jews in the name of Germany, even if he was not personally involved in it.”91”
― Hammann Konrad, Rudolf Bultmann: a Biography

“Agreeing with the Jewish theologian, Bultmann viewed the radical self-assessment of Jews and Germans as a necessary beginning for a genuine peace between the two peoples. Also necessary would be insight into the true nature of the human being, the nation, and the state, perceptions that had been grossly distorted by National Socialism. Bultmann again put forth his oft-repeated view that National Socialism represented the conclusion of a development that had begun in the nineteenth century. Its distinguishing marks, he reiterated, were the abandoning of the understanding of the human being as person and of the world as a divine ordinance, the illusion of being able to extend human rule even over destiny and history, and the exploitation of human beings for political and economic purposes—a dehumanization effected by the totalitarian power-state under the guise of utilitarianism.89”
― Hammann Konrad, Rudolf Bultmann: a Biography

“Above all, faith makes it possible to discern despite those inequalities “the ultimate inner equality” that has its irreversible foundation in defining the individual in terms of the imago Dei,68 and hence this radical equality can never be relativized by falsely alleging the original inequality of persons, races and peoples.”
― Hammann Konrad, Rudolf Bultmann: a Biography

“he feared it was overly restricting itself to a mere repristination of the ecclesiastical confessions and so was running the risk of being able to express the Christian faith only in terms of a bygone language and an outmoded worldview.”
― Hammann Konrad, Rudolf Bultmann: a Biography

“Bultmann compellingly suggests to his readers in 1941 that precisely therein does the state as embodied by Pilate still distinguish itself from the German state of the present day. For since it no longer preserves even the appearance of law, the National Socialist state can in no way claim itself to be what the New Testament intends by that term. This perverted state is nothing but a manifestation of the cosmos at enmity with God. It is institutionalized evil.”
― Hammann Konrad, Rudolf Bultmann: a Biography

“His theological work found expression not only in opposition to the church politics of National Socialism, but also in the ongoing crucial debate with key elements of National Socialist ideology and of its understanding of the state. In this regard, he distanced himself either explicitly or implicitly from such Lutheran theologians as Paul Althaus, Werner Elert, Friedrich Gogarten, and Emanuel Hirsch, who in various ways accorded the priceless gift of theological legitimation to the Third Reich by interpreting the historical and natural realities of human life in an utterly un-Lutheran way—that is, as direct or indirect manifestations of the law of God.”
― Hammann Konrad, Rudolf Bultmann: a Biography

“In accord with von Soden’s rigorous argument from canon law, Bultmann ruled out the suggestion that the secular state be made subject to a special Christian privilege. Christians could not abstractly and defensively claim the right to resist the state. Only when the Christian confession ruled out fulfilling a specific demand of the state was it valid to resist and to suffer the consequences of this resistance.45”
― Hammann Konrad, Rudolf Bultmann: a Biography

“In the years that followed, Bultmann found himself provoked to argument with National Socialism in a variety of institutional contexts and on a variety of topics. The common denominator of these disagreements was the claim of the National Socialist regime to have authority over all aspects of German life.”
― Hammann Konrad, Rudolf Bultmann: a Biography

“But in the biblical understanding revelation is a historical event: it is the word of God coming to the moment of human existence, “which makes the truth of the moment visible and, thereby, makes God visible.”452 Revelation takes place more specifically as God’s address, which as the word of forgiveness interrupts the history of the human being that is determined by sin. The word of the forgiving love of God specifically calls the individual out of the past determined by his own doing, and into decision by enabling him to grasp the “now” of his existence—the new possibility of authentic existence now coming towards him from the future of God.”
― Hammann Konrad, Rudolf Bultmann: a Biography

“This, however, does not lie within the realm of human possibilities. Since a human being exists only from moment to moment, his ability to recognize God, and in the act of so doing achieve authenticity, must be due to the self-disclosure of God, which by its very nature can be experienced only through faith.”
― Hammann Konrad, Rudolf Bultmann: a Biography

“Rather, he proclaims forgiveness, and it occurs in his word to the extent that this grips the hearer. Jesus does not seek to prove the truth of this word by way of one sort of guarantee or another; Jesus is, however, the bearer of this word sent by God.”
― Hammann Konrad, Rudolf Bultmann: a Biography

“God is the God of the present for the sinner, precisely through casting him away from God, and he is at the same time the God of the future, because he maintains his claim on the sinner and for new obedience opens a new future for him in his forgiveness.”300”
― Hammann Konrad, Rudolf Bultmann: a Biography

“Jesus understood himself as bearer of the word of God in the end times. His call to decision in the face of his person implied a christology. Thereupon, with its confession of the crucified Jesus as the Messiah, the earliest community understood the cross as the eschatological deed of God and understood itself anew on this basis.”
― Hammann Konrad, Rudolf Bultmann: a Biography

“Nevertheless, the authority to distinguish right doctrine from heresy does not belong to church leadership, which Bultmann evidently understands to be merely an arm of administration. Rather, it arises from the common relation of church doctrine and theology to their one purpose, the revelation of God, so that in the Protestant Church only theology can exercise the doctrinal office.”
― Hammann Konrad, Rudolf Bultmann: a Biography

“Reversing the stand he took in 1922, he now declares that faith is not a state of consciousness.71 Since it is something God creates in the human being, faith is neither brought about nor illustrated in the natural life of the individual. The faithful person is never the natural person, but rather always “the person killed and brought back to life by God.”72 The identity of the person who by faith is made new and otherworldly is utterly different from that of the old, this-worldly person.”
― Hammann Konrad, Rudolf Bultmann: a Biography

“His intense devotion to reviewing contributed greatly to the expansion of his own research library. “A nice side-benefit is that the copies of the books reviewed remain my property.”78”
― Hammann Konrad, Rudolf Bultmann: a Biography