The Theological Crisis in Europe: Decline of the Bultmann Era?

First in a Series (Part II)

Rudolf Bultmann singles out Hans Conzelmann of Göttingen and Erich Dinkler of Heidelberg as his most representative disciples whose results stand closest to his own and whose theology consistently veers away from the relevance of the historical Jesus. When pressed for additional names of “genuine disciples” Bultmann lists almost all of his former students, despite their deviations. “Although I cannot say with certainty, I think they all go along,” he remarked, “though with many modifications.” In such generalities, Bultmann reveals his awareness that, while none of his former students (Mezger, Conzelmann, Dinkler, Fuchs, Ebeling, Schweizer, Bornkamm, Vielhauer, Käsemann, Kümmel) breaks in all respects with basic Bultmannian positions, yet their departures therefrom cannot be minimized nor can the differences among the men themselves.

The significance of the historical Jesus for Christian faith is the controversial issue that divides these scholars.

Not only against the Mainz radicals who emphasize personal relationships exclusively, but also against Bultmann and many post-Bultmannians, Fuchs contends that “community between men is possible only in the community between God and men” and that “the historical Jesus stands in the midst of revelation.” Fuchs turns these principles against Braun and Mezger and whoever else seeks to invert them on Bultmann’s premises, as well as against post-Bultmannians who are interested in the historical Jesus as he and Ebeling also are, but who are “unsure whether God’s presence is dependent on revelation or revelation dependent on God’s presence.” Both Conzelmann and Käsemann, complains Fuchs, are unclear about how the historical Jesus and revelation are to be correlated. Conzelmann, unlike Käsemann, concedes to radical historical criticism a role even more important than that of existential interpretation, while he nonetheless seeks to be an orthodox Lutheran. And while Bornkamm shares an interest in the historical Jesus, he subscribes also to Bultmann’s notion that “the faith came with Easter,” while Fuchs, on the other hand, insists that “the faith came from Jesus.” Yet when Schweizer of Zürich carries his post-Bultmannian interest in the historical Jesus to the point of inquiry into Jesus’ Messianic self-consciousness, Fuchs calls this an illicit undertaking: “The New Testament is dogmatics, and this cannot be translated into historical data.”

Bultmann himself meanwhile decries the fact that the growing interest in the historical Jesus may revive an appeal to historical factors in support and proof of faith. He still maintains that history can never provide a fundamental basis for faith and that faith does not need historical legitimation or historical supports. For Bultmann, the kerygma (the primitive Christian proclamation) alone is basic for faith.

Not even a post-Bultmannian like Bornkamm disputes this point of view, despite his insistence that Jesus’ pre-Easter preaching contains inner connections with the post-Easter kerygma, and that faith is interested in Lite content of Jesus’ preaching. “Bultmann is completely right,” he insists, “in his view that faith cannot be proved, and that the resurrection of Christ is the point of departure.”

In conversation Bultmann now seems to move even beyond his earlier limitation of historical interest to Jesus as merely a Jewish prophet and to his death. “We can know that he lived and preached and interpreted the Old Testament; that he deplored Jewish legalism, abandoned ritual purifications, and breached the Sabbath commandment; that he was not an ascetic, and was a friend of harlots and sinners; that he showed sympathy to women and children, and performed exorcisms.” In fact, in Wiesbaden, where Bultmann was seeking cure of an ailment, he was almost disposed to allow that Jesus healed the sick!

Nevertheless, Bultmann’s theological outlook can tolerate no return to the historical Jesus as decisive for faith. His readiness to minimize the clash between his disciples must be understood in this context. “We agree that the historical Jesus is the origin of Christianity and agree in the paradox that an historical person is also the eschatological fact which is always present in the Word.” By insisting on the event of Jesus Christ, Bultmann aims to distinguish the kerygmatic Christ from any mere Gnostic redeemer-myth.

Now it is true that Bultmann is formally right in insisting that the Easter message is the decisive starting point of Christian faith. He wants no return to the historical Jesus that would erase a decisive break between the historical Jesus and “the Easter event.” But his repudiation of the Easter fact, his “demiracleizing” of the Gospels, and his abandonment of the question of the historical Jesus as a theologically fundamental question all rob this emphasis of power. The complaint has widened that his complete rejection of any theological significance for Jesus of Nazareth does violence to apostolic Christianity. Bultmann’s view seemed more and more—his intention to the contrary—to dissolve apostolic proclamation into a Christ-myth through his one-sided severance of the kerygma from the event it proclaims and his censorship of the relevance of the historical Jesus.

Breakdown Of Bultmann’S Positions

While the broken defense of existentialist positions has thus divided the Bultmannian camp, the assault from outside has increased in scope and depth. Over against Bultmann not only post-Bultmannians, but also the Heilsgeschichte scholars and the Pannenberg school as well as traditionally conservative scholars, are demanding the recognition of a Christian starting point also in the life and teaching of the historical Jesus. “The smoke over the frontiers has lifted,” reports Leonhard Goppelt of Hamburg, “and a new generation is in view. Bultmann’s spell is broken, and the wide range of critical discussion signals an open period. Now that a shift from Bultmann is under way in a new direction, we are on the threshold of a change as significant as that of a century ago, when Hegelian emphases gave way to the neo-Kantianism of Ritschl.”

As Joachim Jeremias of Göttingen sees it, the vulnerability of Bultmann’s theological structure is evident from the fact that three of its fundamental emphases are now more or less shattered:

1. Bultmann’s neglect of the historical Jesus has broken down, and a deliberate return to the historical Jesus now characterizes New Testament studies. In deference to Wellhausen, Bultmann held that Jesus was but a Jewish prophet and that his life and message were not of great importance for Paul. The untenability of this position is now clear, and it is widely agreed that Christianity cannot be truly understood without a return to the historical Jesus.

2. Bultmann placed great weight on an alleged Gnosticism which supposedly influenced the Gospel of John and other New Testament literature. But the Dead Sea Scrolls show that the dualism of John’s Gospel is Palestinian and Judaic. A monograph by Carsten Colpe is widely credited with demonstrating convincingly that the model of a pre-Christian Gnostic redeemer-myth which Bultmann locates behind New Testament writings is actually nothing but the myth of Manicheanism of the third century A.D., which very likely sprang from a Docetic Christology repudiated by historic Christianity.

3. Bultmann defined the task of exegesis as the existential understanding of the New Testament, and he therefore stressed anthropology: “The Gospel gives me a new understanding of myself.” But “the Gospels stress theology, and they give us new knowledge of God,” counters Jeremias, one of the most articulate spokesmen for traditional conservative positions. Jeremias comments that “the history of the Church has shown that it is always dangerous when New Testament exegesis takes its method from contemporary philosophy, whether the idealistic philosophy of the nineteenth century or the existentialist pholosophy of the twentieth century.”

It remains true nonetheless that Bultmann’s followers—whether “genuine” or “spurious”—perpetuate many methodological and critical presuppositions integral to Bultmann’s theology. Despite their interest in the historical Jesus, even the deviationist disciples retain Bultmann’s notion that the task of exegesis is existential interpretation. But this basic Bultmannian assumption is challenged by Kümmel, a spokesman for the Heilsgeschichte school. Kümmel repudiates the presupposition that the task of exegesis is to discover the self-understanding of the New Testament writers in order to correct our self-understanding. The real task of hermeneutics, he says pointedly, is to find out what the New Testament teaches. The New Testament is “a revelation of the history of salvation,” he insists, and he is confident that the critically founded search for the historical Jesus will “win the field.” Kümmel emphasizes that “the facts, not the kerygma, evoke my response.”

An Unrepentant Bultmann

Bultmann remains unconvinced that his presuppositions have been shaken. He hardly regards himself as an emperor in exile or about to be deposed. Of his a prioris, he considers the second (as Jeremias lists them) less important than the others, but even with respect to the supposed Gnostic background of the New Testament he clings still to the position that the theology of the Fourth Gospel and of Paul is influenced by Gnostic views. In fact, Bultmann is currently writing a commentary on John’s Epistles from this perspective to round out his earlier work on John’s Gospel. Bultmann attaches more importance, however, to his other a prioris regarding the historical Jesus and existential understanding, which, he says, “stand together.” Although he professes also to be “interested in” the historical Jesus, he speaks only of Jesus’ deeds, and of these in attenuated and non-miraculous form. Contrary to the nineteenth century “life of Jesus” school, he insists that we can know nothing of Jesus’ personality, and considers this no real loss. “What does it matter?” he asks. “What counts is his Word and his Cross which is the same now as then.” While Bultmann does not destroy continuity between the historical Jesus and the New Testament kerygma, he nonetheless denies continuity between the historical Jesus and the Christ of the kerygma. As he sees it, the kerygma requires only the “that” of the life of Jesus and the fact of his crucifixion. In other words, the kerygma presupposes but mythologizes the historical Jesus.

The issues of central importance, according to Bultmann, are the historical method and Formgeschichte in biblical theology, and the problem of history and its interpretation in hermeneutics, the latter being “connected with anthropological and philosophical problems.”

The complaint that he virtually abandons the concept of revelation Bultmann attributes to a misunderstanding of his thought and intention. He insists now as always on the reality of revelation, but he distinguishes Offenbarheit from Offenbarung—that is, revelation as an objectifiable fact from revelation as an act. In Bultmann’s sense, “genuine revelation” is always only an act, never an objectified fact. “Revelation happens only in the moment when the Word of God encounters me.”

But for all Bultmann’s self-assurance, European theology is increasingly moving outside the orbit of his control and influence. The so-called “Bultmann school” has never really been a unit, even if his disciples all work within similar critical and methodological assumptions. While they build on Bultmann as the most important New Testament theologian of our time, they now separate the two emphases which Bultmann conjoined: radical criticism of the trustworthiness of the Gospels and existential interpretation. Heidegger’s dark and harsh image of man, which so neatly fit the mood of a post-war generation plagued by anxiety, became most important for Bultmann’s disciples. The Fuchs-Ebeling line of existential exegesis turned Bultmann’s New Testament ideas into dogmatics à la Heidegger. But Bultmann’s disciples have increasingly pulled back from his views or moved around them in some respects, each man emphasizing a perspective which diverges from Bultmann—sometimes dealing severely with him—and combating other post-Bultmannians as well. More and more, Bultmann’s followers distinguish his exegetical and historical work from his philosophical and dogmatic intention. But none of the post-Bultmannians has so united the relevant data from a new perspective as to be able to shape a coherent alternative to Bultmann’s view.

Attacks on Bultmann’s position from outside his camp have become sharper and sharper and have exploited the interior divisions. Heinrich Schier, a former Bultmann student and disciple, became a Roman Catholic and is now teaching in Bonn. “Bultmann is a rationalist and neo-Ritschlian,” says Emil Brunner. “He seeks to overcome nihilism, which endangers his position, but his alternative is never quite clear.” And Peter Brunner, the Heidelberg theologian, points a finger at Bultmann’s “weakest point”: “In Glauben und Verstehen he nowhere tells us what a minister must say in order to articulate the Gospel, nor what (besides the name of Jesus and his cross) is the binding or given content of the message to be perpetuated. He presupposes that a message comes to the individual, and discusses the problem of the individual to whom the message comes, and how it is to be grasped. But if one raises the question of proclamation into the future, it becomes clear that Bultmann has not resolved the problem of content.” Says Otto Weber, the Göttingen theologian: “In a word, the reason for the breakdown of Bultmann’s theology is his existentialism.” And front Basel Karl Barth’s verdict has echoed throughout Europe: “Thank God, Bultmann doesn’t draw the consistent consequences and demythologize God!”

Criticism of Bultmann’s theology is increasing. Many scholars observe that while Bultmann scorns all philosophy as culture-bound and transitory, he nonetheless exempts existentialism. In his existential “third heaven” he claims to have exclusive leverage against the whole field of thought and life. But existentialism is no heaven-born absolute; it is very much a modern philosophical scheme. Any translation of New Testament concepts into existential categories must result in a version no less “limited”—linguistically and historically—than the biblical theology the existentialists aim to “purify.” The Bultmannians assume, moreover, that the New Testament writers, since they were especially interested in their subject, must have transformed (and deformed) the historical facts of the Gospels. This premise the existentialists fail to apply to their own special interest in the kerygma. While the Bultmannians rid themselves of the miracle of objective revelation, they seem to endow their subjectivity with a secret objectivity, and abandon the apostolic miracles only to make room for their own.

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