First in a Series by Evangelical Scholars
The theological way proposed by Rudolf Bultmann has many attractions. It seems to maintain the essence of the Gospel. It incorporates insights won from Kierkegaard and existentialism. It gives a warm and dynamic preaching in realistic terms. It has its solution for problems raised by biblical study. It frees the Gospel from the language and thought forms of the past. It permits academic inquiry and takes away the offense of peripheral phrases and factors. In short, here are the advantages of the liberal program apparently without the mistake of open distortion or destruction of the substance of Christianity. Why should we not follow Bultmann?
CENTER OR PERIPHERY?
Some subsidiary reservations suggest themselves. Perhaps it is not so easy as assumed to separate the center of the Gospel from the periphery. Does not the Empty Tomb, for example, really belong to the center even though not itself the Resurrection? Again, is the link with existentialism really an asset? In his acute study Rudolf Bultmann (Evangelischer Verlag, 1952), Karl Barth points out that there are probably “not many ‘modern’ men who will really feel that they are adequately understood” in Heidegger’s thought (p. 39), and in any case the fashion in philosophies changes quickly. Moreover, the concept of myth is surely an importation to the Bible’s own standpoint, and where are the criteria to differentiate the supposed mythological factors? As Barth asks, “is not Bultmann’s concept too formal to cover what we call myth either in the past or the present?” (ibid., p. 31 f.). Indeed, is there not here the deeper hermeneutical mistake of bringing the Bible under a general rule instead of making it “the model and norm of all hermeneutics” (ibid., p. 50)? May it not be that after all the Bultmann structure rests on seriously insecure foundations?
BULTMANN’S SELF-SPUN MYTH
More deeply, however, the proposed demythologization of Bultmann entails a genuine mythologization which makes true theology quite impossible. As Bultmann seems to see it, the reality of the Gospel consists in a so-called existential proclamation leading to an existential death and resurrection in terms of the end of a false view of life and the dawn of a true. If so, then ultimately the factuality of the New Testament incidents and records matters little. Many things may be endorsed, but many others may be freely discounted as mythical accretions. What finally matters is the message and actuality of the Christ event alone. To be sure, this is an improvement on the older liberalism in its call for total involvement and in its assertion of the centrality of death and resurrection. But for Bultmann the gospel record, and even Jesus Christ himself, can be only a starting-point, medium, and representation of the true reality which lies in the existential death and resurrection of believers. As Barth shows, this is not really “a doctrine of Christ, but essentially and properly that of an event of conversion which has merely found its beginning in Christ and simply bears his name and title” (ibid., p. 18). The Gospel is here a salvation myth depicting and mediating the true salvation which is existential. The minor attempts at demythologization disclose a radical mythologization. What Bultmann proposes is in fact real mythology.
LOSS OF A DATED REDEMPTION
It is mythology in its severance from genuine historicity. Certainly Bultmann emphasizes the words Geschichte (history as occurrence) and Geschehen (event), especially in contrast to Historie (history as record). But for him Geschichte is not so much the history of past, objective fact; it is the dynamic history what happens here, now, in me. The event of crucifixion is not basically the death of Jesus on Golgotha under Pontius Pilate about 30 A.D.; it is my death to sin and error. The event of resurrection is not the raising of Jesus from the tomb; it is the message of new life and my awakening to it. Of course, these things are important. There must be an event of preaching and an event of response. But are these the true salvation event? Does not the Gospel differ from all mythology in the very point that its essence is a dated event, an enacted work, an accomplished salvation? Does not Bultmann silence the chief note of the Gospel by not letting it say that “it has pleased God to humble himself, and therefore to become earthly, this-worldly and, horribile dictu, datable” (ibid., p. 32 f.)? What is crucifixion without Calvary? What is resurrection without the rising of Christ and the Empty Tomb?
BARTH’S FIVE QUESTIONS
The latter point is particularly important. For, while Bultmann accepts the death of Christ, he dismisses the Resurrection as one of the mythical intrusions, as a “nature-miracle,” as a “miraculous proof” which demands interpretation. “For our part,” says Barth, “we maintain the direct opposite.” The statement that Christ is risen “is valid in its simplest sense, and only in that sense is it the central affirmation of the whole of the New Testament.” The weaknesses in Bultmann’s reasoning are exposed in five questions which Barth then proceeds to address to him: “1. Is it true that a theological statement is valid only when it can be proved to be a genuine element in the Christian understanding of human existence?… 2. Is it true that an event alleged to have happened in time can be accepted only if it can be proved to be ‘historical fact’ in Bultmann’s sense?… 3. Is it true that the assertion of the historicity of an event which by its very nature is accessible to (this) ‘historical’ verification … is merely a blind acceptance of a piece of mythology?… 4. Is it true that modern thought is ‘shaped for good or ill by modern science’?… 5. Is it true that we are compelled to reject a statement simply because this statement, or something like it, was compatible with the mythical world-view of the past?” (Church Dogmatics, III, 2, pp. 443 ff.). Until Bultmann produces solid answers to these questions, Barth is confident that we both may and must continue to “accept the resurrection of Jesus, and His subsequent appearances to His disciples, as genuine history” (ibid., p. 447).
BIBLICAL STUDY BECOMES FUTILE
The content of this history is that God himself has acted in human affairs in a series of events, culminating in the Crucifixion and Resurrection, by which salvation has been definitively accomplished. Nor is this Geschichte divorced from Historie. In and with the events he has given an authentic record, Holy Scripture. To reject this Geschichte is to throw away the kernel of the Gospel; to reject this Historie is to condemn biblical study to final irrelevance and futility. In the last analysis, indeed, it is to imply a final Docetism (cf. Rudolf Bultmann, p. 34) no less grotesque and unconvincing than that of Gnosticism: a crucifixion, but no necessary or significant Cross; a resurrection, but only the myth of an Empty Tomb; an event of salvation, but no historical enactment; a kerygma, but no true record; a Christ, but an unimportant and uncertain Jesus.
THE BREAK WITH OBJECTIVITY
Again, the Bultmann view is mythology in its non-objectivity. This point is obviously linked with the first. Without datable events in a true record there can be no objectivity. Yet in view of Bultmann’s presuppositions, the break with objectivity may well precede and underlie that with history. We have only to consider his approach to the Bible and its message. Bultmann knows in advance what the real theme is. He knows without consulting Scripture that there is myth in it. He knows of himself how to differentiate between the factual and the mythical. He knows without learning from Scripture how to understand Scripture. To Barth, this is perhaps the most radical and depressing feature in the whole program: “In distinction from many others who cannot follow him, I find the greatest difficulty, not in his massive anti-supernatural negations, excisions and transmutations, but in his underlying—how shall I put it?—pre-Copernican attitude” (ibid., p. 53). By contrast, Barth approvingly quotes the objective principle of Luther: “The Sacred Scriptures desire a humble reader … who always says, Teach me, teach me, teach me!” (ibid., p. 50). If he had practiced this objectivity at the outset, Bultmann could have been kept from his mythologizing “de-historicization.”
The basic nonobjectivity, however, is matched by nonobjectivity of understanding. If the record is not an object in its own right, neither is the event recorded. The real reconciliation is not effected in first century Palestine; it is only represented. The revelation of God has not taken place; a mere mode of communication has been established. The new life has not come in the Resurrection; a mere sign has been given. The pre-eminence of Christ, his representative work, objective justification, faith in him—these are only a manner of speaking. The substance is existential. No one, of course, would minimize the importance of the application of Christ’s work. But here is a subjectivization which subverts and destroys the Gospel. The point of the Gospel, without which it is nothing, is that Christ “has already suffered the penalty of death for the salvation of all men, that he has already accomplished their transition from the old man to the new, that he has already effected their transposition to existential being, that he has not merely initiated but completed this process” (ibid., p. 21). If we dismiss the objectivity of this finished work, it avails us little to make it the sign or theme of preaching and understanding. No myth can be the Good News. The Good News is real news, that is, News of what God has concretely and definitively done for our salvation.
CROWDING GOD FROM THE CENTER
Finally, it is mythology in its substitution of anthropocentricity for biblical Christocentricity or theocentricity. Myths are stories of the gods, but man is their true theme. So it is with Bultmann. The terms and concepts have changed, but in the main liberal stream man is still the center and measure of all things. Man declares the nature of the Bible. Man distinguishes the mythical. Man demythologizes. Man decides the theme. Man is the substance and center of the salvation event. Jesus Christ belongs to the periphery. He is a cipher. He is a point of departure. He is a summons to man to actualize his salvation by his own faith and obedience. “How far is this really Gospel?” asks Barth. “How far is it any more than a new law?… How far in the usage of Bultmann can the pro nobis (for us) mean anything more than that the kerygma applies to us, that it is significant for us, that it is accepted by us as the law of our decision, that it is to be realized in the act of our faith, in the imitatio Christi?” (ibid., p. 19). In short, man not only controls his theology; he is its primary subject.
The true Gospel, however, is very different. God controls it. God is its subject. The story is his, the work, the power, and the glory. To put man in the center does not just pervert the Gospel, it displaces it. It makes it impossible. It substitutes a human word which is no less illusory in content than fictional in form. It implies reversion from Gospel to myth.
Further points of detail might be raised. Can the Gospel, for example, really be proclaimed in any other form than that which it has been given? Bultmann is no good advertisement here, as Barth dryly comments (ibid., p. 34). Such matters, however, are derivative. We cannot follow Bultmann because the presupposition of his demythologizing is a true and devastating mythologization. For all his good intentions and appearances, Bultmann accomplishes nothing for faith, understanding, preaching, or salvation. He finally leaves us neither with God nor Christ, neither with kerygma nor faith, neither with true death to sin nor true resurrection to life, but only with man in the existential message and moment of assumed knowledge and self-centered conversion. On what grounds and to what end should we follow?
Samuel M. Shoemaker is the author of a number of popular books and the gifted Rector of Calvary Episcopal Church in Pittsburgh. He is known for his effective leadership of laymen and his deeply spiritual approach to all vital issues.
