{"id":79,"date":"2012-01-13T12:16:00","date_gmt":"2012-01-13T02:16:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.pbw.id.au\/blog\/uncategorized\/bultmann-kerygma-and-myth\/"},"modified":"2018-05-22T21:49:41","modified_gmt":"2018-05-22T11:49:41","slug":"bultmann-kerygma-and-myth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pbw.id.au\/blog\/2012\/01\/bultmann-kerygma-and-myth\/","title":{"rendered":"Bultmann, Kerygma and Myth"},"content":{"rendered":"

This is a handshake introduction to an extremely influential work:\u00a0Kerygma and Myth by Rudolf Bultmann and Five Critics<\/a><\/i>. The work was originally published in Germany in 1948; the original English translation appeared in 1953.<\/p>\n

The first two parts of the piece reproduce Bultmann’s 1941 paper, translated as\u00a0New Testament and Mythology<\/i>. The paper is most easily accessible in the\u00a0Kerygma and Myth<\/i>\u00a0collection, and it is accompanied by some useful commentary.<\/p>\n

James F. Kay, now\u00a0Princeton Theological Seminary\u2019s Dean of Academic Affairs, wrote in 1991 in an\u00a0article<\/a>\u00a0marking the 50th anniversary of the paper,<\/p>\n

Bultmann spoke at nine o’clock in the morning [of 4th June, 1941], and, with the exception of prayers at noon and again at four o’clock, the whole day was devoted to discussing his lecture. Thus appeared, a half century ago, what Schubert M. Ogden later called “perhaps the single most discussed and controversial theological writing of the century.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The prayers are a nice touch. Kay offers some flavour of Bultmann’s theology.<\/p>\n

For Bultmann, myth embraces those reality claims that do not square with scientific understanding. For example, the kerygma’s claim that Jesus rose from the dead\u00a0cannot refer to a real fact or event<\/b>\u00a0about Jesus inasmuch as facts and events are held to be recovered, or reconstructed, through scientific means. [Emphasis mine.]<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

However, Bultmann’s reputation had suffered by 1991.\u00a0Myth<\/i>\u00a0was overtaken by\u00a0narrative<\/i>\u00a0as the theological mode-de-jour. Should we cheer? Not yet. Kay discusses\u00a0Hans W. Frei’s\u00a0The Identity of Jesus Christ\u00a0<\/i>as a seminal essay in the rise of narrative theology. He writes,<\/p>\n

Frei, as a\u00a0believing<\/i>\u00a0Christian,\u00a0…\u00a0must show how a literary character possesses saving significance for people today.\u00a0Frei … ingeniously… infers the present factuality of the Savior on the basis of his literary identity. The\u00a0fictional Gospel narrative<\/b>\u00a0renders an identity of Jesus that entails the claim of his factual presence today. [Emphasis and italics mine.]<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Got that? \u00a0You may have noticed that no-one in this discussion actually believes the Gospels, nor does anyone feel the need to explain their disbelief. \u00a0The discussion is about how, given that the Gospels do not witness to actual events, to construct some elaborate rationale for calling oneself a Christian at all. Note that all of these folks are descendants of the Reformation. Whither\u00a0sola scriptura<\/i>?<\/p>\n

In the\u00a0linked version<\/a>\u00a0of\u00a0Kerygma and Myth<\/i>, John Reeves, in an introduction written in 2005, points out that Bultmann was defining a position that was more traditional than that of his teachers such as Harnack.<\/p>\n

For Adolf Harnack and other German liberals, the significance of Jesus lay only in his moral teachings. Following Karl Barth, Bultmann argued that \u201c[t]he NewTestament talks about an event through which God has brought about our salvation. It does not proclaim Jesus primarily as a teacher\u2026\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

From the perspective of 1941, the devastation that is Bultmann looked like a green shoot. German liberal theologians had laid waste the landscape in the generations before, in the manner of Strauss and Harnack. The Gospels were full of mythical tales, which no “modern” man could believe. German theology proceeded from this bedrock of understanding to construct a theological mythology\u2014or narrative\u2014of its own. Bultmann, also a “believing Christian,” had to try to convince himself and others that\u00a0salvation<\/i>\u00a0remained a term with any meaning.<\/p>\n

Bultmann thought to base a new understanding on the correspondence he saw between the existentialism of the philosopher Martin Heidegger, a sometime colleague at Marburg, and the “existentialism” Bultmann detected in his particular reading of the New Testament. Reeves writes,<\/p>\n

For Bultmann, the philosophy that best understands human existence is the existentialism of … Heidegger. Or rather, \u201c\u2026Heidegger\u2019s existentialist analysis of human existence seems to be only a profane philosophical presentation of the New Testament view of who we are\u2026\u201d Bultmann rejects the charge that he is translating the kerygma into an alien philosophical framework, for Heidegger\u2019s philosophy \u201call by itself\u201dhas discovered the New Testament message about the human condition.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

We might well ask which came first, the New Testament or the profane philosophy. \u00a0As Reeves says in summarising, “While Bultmann had hoped to anchor the Christian gospel in a secure existentialist framework, in fact this framework secured its irrelevance as soon as Heidegger\u2019s philosophy became dated.”\u00a0In another post I will look at some of the “mythology” that Bultmann sought to strip out of the new New Testament.<\/p>\n

All of this was occurring in Germany between the wars, simultaneously with the rise of Hitler and the savage paganism that effectively swept Christianity aside in that country. When\u00a0New Testament and Mythology<\/i>\u00a0was delivered, Nazism was at the apogee of its power and security. Within a few months,\u00a0Operation Barbarossa<\/i>\u00a0would be launched against the Soviet Union, and the cataclysm would be set in motion. German theology could not possibly have any bearing on all that, though.<\/p>\n

<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This is a handshake introduction to an extremely influential work:\u00a0Kerygma and Myth by Rudolf Bultmann and Five Critics. The work was originally published in Germany in 1948; the original English translation appeared in 1953. The first two parts of the piece reproduce Bultmann’s 1941 paper, translated as\u00a0New Testament and Mythology. The paper is most easily … Continue reading “Bultmann, Kerygma and Myth”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[29,18,20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-79","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-belief","category-faith","category-culture"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8SCfl-1h","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":77,"url":"https:\/\/pbw.id.au\/blog\/2012\/01\/bultmann-the-problem-1-the-myths\/","url_meta":{"origin":79,"position":0},"title":"Bultmann: The Problem 1. The Myths","author":"pbw","date":"Mon 23rd Jan '12","format":false,"excerpt":"As mentioned in a previous post,\u00a0Kerygma and Myth\u00a0contains the text of Bultmann's\u00a0New Testament and Myth\u00a0in the first two parts authored by Bultmann. I will look at the first of those,\u00a0The Mythological Element in the Message of the NewTestament and the Problem of its Re-interpretation Part I. That document is further\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Faith"","block_context":{"text":"Faith","link":"https:\/\/pbw.id.au\/blog\/category\/belief\/faith\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":71,"url":"https:\/\/pbw.id.au\/blog\/2012\/02\/from-pio-to-bultmann-and-back\/","url_meta":{"origin":79,"position":1},"title":"From Pio to Bultmann and back","author":"pbw","date":"Sun 26th Feb '12","format":false,"excerpt":"C. Bernard Ruffin, in his book Padre Pio: The True Story, wrote: Padre Pio was almost an exact contemporary of Rudolph Bultmann (1884-1976)...\u00a0Bultmann wrote in Kerygma and Myth: \"It is impossible to use electric light ... and at the same time to believe in the New Testament world of demons\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Faith"","block_context":{"text":"Faith","link":"https:\/\/pbw.id.au\/blog\/category\/belief\/faith\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":76,"url":"https:\/\/pbw.id.au\/blog\/2012\/01\/bultmann-the-problem-2-obsolete-mythology\/","url_meta":{"origin":79,"position":2},"title":"Bultmann: The Problem 2. Obsolete Mythology","author":"pbw","date":"Wed 25th Jan '12","format":false,"excerpt":"This is a follow-on from my\u00a0previous post. It looks at the subsection that follows from the summary view of the NT as mythology. I urge you to read this subsection in its entirety in\u00a0Kerygma and Myth. 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O Seculo (a pro-government, anti-clerical, Lisbon paper): From the road, where the vehicles were parked and where hundreds of people who had not dared to brave the mud were congregated, one could\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Faith"","block_context":{"text":"Faith","link":"https:\/\/pbw.id.au\/blog\/category\/belief\/faith\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":58,"url":"https:\/\/pbw.id.au\/blog\/2013\/09\/identity-theft\/","url_meta":{"origin":79,"position":5},"title":"Identity Theft","author":"pbw","date":"Fri 6th Sep '13","format":false,"excerpt":"On the 10th of October, 2010, Natasha Mitchell interviewed Thomas Metzinger on the Australian Broadcasting Corporation's Radio National network program All in the Mind. The show was titled You are not a self! Bodies, brains and the nature of consciousness. The ABC is the Government-financed public broadcaster in Australia. 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