Bultmann’s criticism of Liberal Theology, Need and Method of Demythologization

 

Bultmann’s criticism of Liberal Theology, Need and Method of Demythologization
 

Rudolf Bultmann  is one of the most influential theologians and is commonly regarded as the greatest New Testamentscholars of the twentieth century.  He  may be best associated with his call to demythologize the New Testament so the Christian Gospel may be isolated from its mythological features. 

Brief Background of Bultmann

Rudolf Karl Bultmann was born on 20^th August 1884 in a village of the duchy of Oldenburg, (Wiefelstede, Germany). His family members had served as pastors in the Lutheran traditions of the German Evangelical Church for several generations. He was the son of a pastor. His maternal grandfather and paternal great-grandfather had also been pastors. Bultmann completed his final examinations for the Gymnasium at Oldenburg in 1909. Then, he went on to study theology at Tubingen University, then in Berlin and finally at Marburg University. He completed his first theological degree at Marburg in 1906, but he returned to that same university in 1907 to begin his doctoral studies. In 1908, Wilhelm Heitmuller joined the Marburg faculty and through him Bultmann became immersed in the work of the history of religions school.  He completed his Ph.D. in 1910 and his post-doctoral dissertation in 1912.  Then, in 1920 he began to produce a steady stream of books and essays which set forth fundamental new positions in both theology and New Testament. In 1921, he was invited to succeed Heitmuller at Marburg University. For thirty years, Marburg University was Bultmann’s academic home. His productivity as an author continued from 1920 until long after his retirement in 1951. Even after his retirement, he continued to be an active participant in Marburg theological discussions. He died in 1976.

Criticism of Liberal Theology

The 1920 article, Ethical and Mystical Religion in Primitive Christianity, was the first publication in which Bultmann criticized Liberal theology, the dominant protestant theological movement of the nineteenth century. He begins by noting how Liberal theology understood the message of Jesus to be the essence of Christian faith.  Bultmann himself viewed as a partner of Karl Barth in the neo-customary test to radicalism. He accepted that the nineteenth century philosophy has made the human individual the focal point of religious philosophy instead of God. He pronounced that we can know God just because of God's disclosure, which comes in the heavenly word, the kerygma, addressed to the Individual.

Bultmann's more critical talks emerged from his longing to address the then-liberal philosophy that viewed all unlikely scriptural substance as mythical writing that will be immediately disregarded.  He entered a philosophical and theological debate where the liberal answer consisted in the elimination of all mythology. The duty of interpretation for this liberal perspective to a great extend comprised of the assurance of which scriptures are mythical, and which are not. Whole truth can then be determined by simply removing that which is false. Bultmann approaches the scripture with the unabashed conclusion that the literary forms of poetry, allegory, metaphor, apocalyptic, and the ancient methodical understanding of the ancient writers is in its whole no less than a collection of myths, a form of belief in a non-existent supernatural realm not dissimilar to that professed by the ancient Romans and Greeks. Bultmann then considers his assignment to be one of 'demythologizing' the text by dismissing any scriptural material that isn't predictable with present day logical existential agreement, and not at all like his liberal peers, he then, at that point, searches out those genuine and fundamental bits of insight that are concealed under the legends that remain. It is this looking for of the bits of insight that underlie myth that isolated Bultmann from his liberal peers and laid out another universality, or as per his own basic appraisal, 'a new hermeneutic.’

According to Bultmann, the liberal thought falls short of the kergyma of faith and he rejects even the personal witness of the Scripture writers. In his letter to Karl Barth in November, 1952 Bultmann wrote, "Now you have not convinced me that my formal view of myth is wrong. For my part I observe your material view as too narrow. The New Testament writers did not, of course, present universal celestial relations and associations in the form of a story of the gods. But sharing the mythical world-view of their age, they tell the story of the Christ event as a story of the gods, as a myth."  For him the New Testament authors were not trying to write facts about God and the World. Somewhat, they were expressing in insufficient human terms their encounter with the kerygmatic Christ.  Consequently his Christology rejects the virgin birth of Jesus Christ. He said the early community regarded Him as a mythological figure. His person is sight in the light of mythology when he is said to have begotten of the Holy Spirit and born of a virgin.  He also denies the miracles he performed.  He has no interest in the historical Jesus, the figure of flesh and bones who lived and died, but rather is concerned solely with the risen Lord, the Redeemer who is encountered spiritually when the believer is called to decision in the kerygma and the words of the minister.  In his critic he maintained that he has been over zealous in rejecting almost the entire world view of the New Testament.

 Need and Method of Demythologization

Bultmann’s chief concern was to make biblical, Christian faith understandable to modern man. He did as such by utilizing an existentialist understanding of the New Testament, which sees the message of the old report as God's promise addressed to the individual and requiring a singular confidence reaction.  He argued that, the liberal theology had lost the real message of the New Testament for it had reduced the kerygma to principles of religion and ethics and thereby had transform Christianity into a nonhistorical religion. Therefore, Bultmann advocated not removal but interpretation of myth, in order to see the true meaning of the documents expressed in literary form. This is the very thing that he implied by the term demythologizing.

The meaning of this method may be well understood when we make the meaning of mythology in general.According to Dunn, there is no one definition of myth. The problem of definition extends back to the original usage of the word mythos. In terms of etymology it means simply ‘word’ or ‘story’.And in early Greek literature its meaning can range from a "true story", "an account of facts", and so "fact" itself, to an invented story, a legend, fairy story, fable or poetic creation.But in later Greek thought mythos came to stand in antithesis both to logos (rational thought) and historia, and so came to denote "what cannot really exist.” It is often said that mythology is a primitive science, the intention of which is to explain phenomena and incidents which are strange, curious, surprising, or frightening, by attributing them to supernatural causes, to gods or to demons. Mythology convey a certain kind of human reality. It believes that the world and human life have their ground and limits in power which is beyond human control. Myths expresses the knowledge that man is not master of the world and of his life, that the world we live in is full of riddles and mysteries and the that human life is also full of riddles and mysteries.

 

Bultmann’s conception of myth is not simply a miracle or a story about a miracle but rather the way in which reality as a whole is conceived. It is a prescientific way of conceptualizing reality.  For him, the real content of the gospel proclamation about Jesus is closely bound to the pre-scientific cosmologies of the ancient Jewish and Greek world. He argues that the modern Christian cannot be expected to take this mythical world seriously, and so there is nothing to do but to demythologize it.

Bultmann sought to demythologize the Bible, to interpret the kerygma or message currently couched in its outmoded mythological worldview. The term demythologization means the decoding of myth or the reinterpretation of ancient mythical patterns of thought in the Bible into contemporary thought patterns. Bultmann believes that contemporary thought demands a modern scientific view of the universe which interprets reality in terms of a close cause and effect natural order. Greg Gossett said, Demythologization can be well defined as ‘the interpretation of the New Testament in terms that contemporary man can understand’. While he does not accept the historic, orthodox interpretation of biblical Christianity, which includes miracles such as the incarnation, to cite on example of what he calls myth. Bultmann does not accept myth as true statement of the way men may understand what it mean to experience as authentic life. Be that as it may, as indicated by him, the myth is significant, however for current man to embrace its reality, such old idea structures should be demythologize or reevaluated.  He maintained that such reinterpretation was necessary because of the great gulf between the world view in which the ancient texts had been written and the modern mindset.

As per Bultmann, current science perceives that nature depends on circumstances and logical results connections which can be promptly seen by man. He additionally recognized the way that cutting edge man has applied science to the world and tracked down thoughts of the main century, like the 'triple-layered' perspective on the universe, to be bogus. For Bultmann, the world picture of the New Testament is mythical, and the redemptive event is presented in mythical language. The world of the New Testament is a three-storied structure; heaven, earth, and the underworld. Paradise is the dwelling place of God and the heavenly messengers; the hidden world is heck, the habitation of Satan and his devils. The earth is not only the scene of the ordinary life of men, but the place into which the celestial and infernal forces are constantly intruding, both in the events of nature and in the thinking, willing, and acting of men.  He said, the conception of the world as being structured in three stories, the conception of the intervention of the supernatural powers in the course of events, the conception that men can be tempted and corrupted by the devil and possessed by evil spirits, this whole conception of the world is mythological. To retain the deeper meaning of the New Testament, the mythological conception is to be abandon, and this method-demythologizing tries to recover the deeper meaning which is concealed under the cover of mythology.

For Bultmann, Demythologization does not mean stripping away mythical expression of the gospel in the spirit of liberalism as if that would provide a pure look into what happened and who Jesus was. It is rather a matter of experiencing again the gospel and of re-expressing that encounter in the conceptuality of today, though never in such a way that the gospel becomes a mere object.  Unlike liberalism, his approach does not mean a removal of but rather a reinterpretation of myths. To demythologize is not to reject 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 very often is retained in Christian dogmatic and in the preaching of the church. It is to deny that the message of Scripture and of the Church is bound to an ancient world-view which is obsolete.

The above points assist us to understand that Bultmann is worry to make scriptural, Christian confidence to be reasonable to the advanced man. For him demythologizing is advocated on the grounds that it works with the gospel in its task of tending to people today. Negatively, demythologizing is analysis of the mythical world picture to the extent that it disguises the genuine goal of myth. Positively, demythologizing is existentialist understanding, in that it tries to clarify the aim of fantasy to discuss human life. It is essentially a positive endeavor to decipher Scripture for hearing the kerygma as present day people. For Bultmann demythologization doesn't decrease God to us, yet interprets Scripture so we, as current people, realize that God is for sure for us.

 

 

Sources:

Bultmann, Rudolf.  Jesus Christ and Mythology. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1958.

Johnson, Roger A. Ed. Rudolf Bultmann: Interpreting Faith for the Modern Era. Minneapolis:       Fortress Press, 1991.

Jaspert, Bernard. Ed. Karl Barth~RudolfBultmann Letters 1922-166.Translated by Geoffrey W.    Bromiley. Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1982.

Jones, Gareth.  Bultmann: Towards a Critical Theology. Cambridge: Polity Press, 1991.

Karkkainen, Veli-Matti.Christology: A Global Introduction. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic,        2007.

Olson, Roger E. & Stanley J. Grenz. 20^th-Century Theology: God & the World in a Transitional    Age. Secunderabad: OM Authentic Book, 2007.

 

Bourke, Myles M. Rudolf Bultmann’sDemythologizing of the New Testament.         http://ejournals.bc. edu/ojs/index.php/ctsa/article/download/2439/2072. Accessed on 12^th         Nov. 2015.

 

Carter, J.W. Existential, Science, and the Scriptures: The Mythological Christology of Rudolf          Bultmann. http://www.biblicalthelogy.com/Research/carterJos.html. Accessed  on  12^th           Nov. 2015.

Dunn, James D.G. Demythologizing-The Problem of Myth in the New Testament.   http://www.biblical studies.org.uk/pdf/nt-interpretation/nti_15.pdf. Accessed on 12^th     Nov. 2015.

Glenn, Alfred A. “Rudolf Bultmann: Removing the False Offense,” in Journal of the Evangelical            Theological society.http://www.etsjets.org/files/JETS-pdf. Accessed on 12th Nov. 2015.

 

Gossett, Greg. Rudolf Bultmann and the Theory of Demythologization, http:// online.com /wumc/             BULTMANN.html.Accessed on 12th Nov. 2015.

Reeves, Josh. Rudolf Bultmann and Demythologization.http://www.people. bu.edu/ wildman/        bce/mwt_ themes_760_bultmann.html.Accessed on 12^th Nov. 2015.