Rudolf Bultmann

Rudolf Karl Bultmann (/ˈbʊltmɑːn/; German: [ˈbʊltman]; 20 August 1884 – 30 July 1976) was a German Lutheran theologian and professor of the New Testament at the University of Marburg. He was one of the major figures of early 20th-century biblical studies. A prominent critic of liberal theology, Bultmann instead argued for an existentialist interpretation of the New Testament. His hermeneutical approach to the New Testament led him to be a proponent of dialectical theology.

Rudolf Bultmann
Rudolf Bultmann in bust by Michael Mohns (2022)
Born	Rudolf Karl Bultmann (1884-08-20)20 August 1884 Wiefelstede, Oldenburg, German Empire
Died	30 July 1976(1976-07-30) (aged 91) Marburg, Hesse, West Germany
Spouse	Helene Feldmann ​ ​ (m. 1917; died 1973)​
Academic background
Education	University of Marburg
Thesis	Der Stil der paulinischen Predigt und die kynisch-stoische Diatribe (1910)
Doctoral advisor	Johannes Weiss
Influences	Karl Barth Hermann Gunkel Adolf von Harnack Martin Heidegger Wilhelm Herrmann Wilhelm Heitmüller Adolf Jülicher Martin Kähler Rudolf Otto Friedrich Schleiermacher Johannes Weiss
Academic work
Discipline	Theology biblical studies
School or tradition	Dialectical theology
Institutions	University of Marburg
Doctoral students	Günther Bornkamm Ernst Fuchs Hans Jonas Ernst Käsemann Helmut Koester
Influenced	Herbert Braun Uta Ranke-Heinemann John Robinson Heinrich Schlier John Shelby Spong
Signature

Bultmann is known for his belief that the historical analysis of the New Testament is both futile and unnecessary, given that the earliest Christian literature showed little interest in specific locations. Bultmann argued that all that matters is the "thatness," not the "whatness" of Jesus, i.e. only that Jesus existed, preached, and died by crucifixion matters, not what happened throughout his life.

Bultmann relied on demythologization, an approach interpreting the mythological elements in the New Testament existentially. Bultmann contended that only faith in the kerygma, or proclamation, of the New Testament was necessary for Christian faith, not any particular facts regarding the historical Jesus.

Background

Bultmann was born on 20 August 1884 in Wiefelstede, Oldenburg, the son of Arthur Kennedy Bultmann, a Lutheran minister. He did his Abitur at the Altes Gymnasium in the city of Oldenburg, and studied theology at Tübingen. After three terms Bultmann went to the University of Berlin for two terms, and finally to Marburg for two more terms. He received his degree in 1910 from Marburg with a dissertation on the Epistles of St Paul written under the supervision of Johannes Weiss. He also studied under Hermann Gunkel and Wilhelm Heitmüller. After submitting a habilitation two years later, he became a lecturer on the New Testament at Marburg.

Bultmann married Helene Feldmann on 6 August 1917. The couple had three daughters. Bultmann's wife died in 1973.

After brief lectureships at Breslau and Giessen, Bultmann returned to Marburg in 1921 as a full professor, and stayed there until his retirement in 1951. His doctoral students included Hans Jonas, Ernst Käsemann, Günther Bornkamm, Helmut Koester, and Ernst Fuchs. He also taught Hannah Arendt. From autumn 1944 until the end of the Second World War in 1945 he took into his family Uta Ranke-Heinemann, who had fled the bombs and destruction in Essen.

Bultmann became friends with Martin Heidegger who taught at Marburg for five years. Heidegger's views on existentialism had an influence on Bultmann's thinking. What arose from this friendship was a "sort of comradery" grounded on an active and open dialogue between Bultmann and Heidegger from 1923 to 1928. However, Bultmann himself stated that his views could not simply be reduced to thinking in Heideggerian categories, in that "the New Testament is not a doctrine about our nature, about our authentic existence as human beings, but a proclamation of this liberating act of God."

He was critical of Nazism from the beginning and his career between 1933 and 1941 was marked by a series of struggles with Nazis regarding their influence upon the universities and the Protestant Church. As a Lutheran who held that the Church could not expect the Nazi State to be Christian, he did not directly denounce its anti-Semitism. But he objected to its claim to have authority over all aspects of German life including the universities and the Protestant church and believed it was his responsibility to preach that it was unChristian, especially after Heidegger gave his pro-Nazi rectorial address in 1933. He particularly rejected the Aryan paragraph that disenfranchised all people racially Jewish from civic organizations and many professions including clergy, entailing defrocking any Christian clergy with Jewish ancestry. He stated that the Aryan paragraph was "incompatible with the essence of the Christian church", since the church made no distinction between Jew and Gentile. He joined the Confessing Church, a Protestant movement in Nazi Germany that arose in opposition to government-sponsored efforts to unify all Protestant churches into a single pro-Nazi Reich Church.

Bultmann received many honors during and after his career, including honorary doctorates from many universities and elections to honorary societies. In 1974, the Federal Republic granted him the highest level of the Order of Merit.

He died on 30 July 1976 in Marburg.

Theological approaches

Bultmann's History of the Synoptic Tradition (1921) remains highly influential as a tool for biblical research, even among scholars who reject his analyses of the conventional rhetorical pericopes (narrative units) which comprise the gospels, and the historically-oriented principles of "form criticism" of which Bultmann was the most influential exponent.

According to Bultmann's definition, "[t]he aim of form-criticism [sic] is to determine the original form of a piece of narrative, a dominical saying or a parable. In the process we learn to distinguish secondary additions and forms, and these in turn lead to important results for the history of the tradition."

In 1941 Bultmann applied form criticism to the Gospel of John, in which he distinguished the presence of a lost Signs Gospel on which John—alone of the evangelists—depended. His monograph, Das Evangelium des Johannes, highly controversial at the time, became a milestone in research into the historical Jesus. The same year his lecture New Testament and Mythology: The Problem of Demythologizing the New Testament Message called on interpreters to demythologize the New Testament; in particular he argued for replacing supernatural biblical interpretations with temporal and existential categorizations. His argument, in many ways, reflected a hermeneutical adaption of the existentialist thought of his colleague at the time, the philosopher Martin Heidegger - but also the hermeneutic procedures developed by Hans Jonas, a student of Heidegger and an exile from Nazi Germany. This approach led Bultmann to reject doctrines such as the pre-existence of Christ. Bultmann believed his endeavors in this regard would make accessible to modern audiences — already immersed in science and technology — the significance (or existential quality) of Jesus' teachings. Bultmann thus thought of his endeavor of "demythologizing the New Testament proclamation" as fundamentally an evangelism task, clarifying the kerygma, or gospel proclamation, by stripping it of elements of the first-century "mythical world picture" that had potential to alienate modern people from Christian faith:

It is impossible to repristinate a past world picture by sheer resolve, especially a mythical world picture, now that all of our thinking is irrevocably formed by science. A blind acceptance of New Testament mythology would be simply arbitrariness; to make such acceptance a demand of faith would be to reduce faith to a work.

Bultmann saw theology in existential terms, and maintained that the New Testament was a radical text, worthy of understanding yet questioned in his time because of the prevailing Protestant conviction in a supernatural interpretation. In both the boasting of legalists "who are faithful to the law" and the boasting of the philosophers "who are proud of their wisdom", Bultmann finds a "basic human attitude" of "highhandedness that tries to bring within our own power even the submission that we know to be our authentic being". Standing against all human high-handedness is the New Testament, "which claims that we can in no way free ourselves from our factual fallenness in the world but are freed from it only by an act of God ... the salvation occurrence that is realized in Christ." Bultmann remained convinced that the narratives of the life of Jesus offered theology in story form, teaching lessons in the familiar language of myth. They were not to be excluded, but given explanation so they could be understood for today. Bultmann thought faith should become a present-day reality. To Bultmann, the people of the world appeared to be always in disappointment and turmoil. Faith must be a determined vital act of will, not a culling and extolling of "ancient proofs". Bultmann said about salvation and eternity: "As from now on there are only believers and unbelievers, so there are also now only saved and lost, those who have life and those who are in death."

Bultmann carried form criticism so far as to call the historical value of the gospels into serious question. Despite that, Bultmann was an outspoken opponent of the Christ myth theory. In his book Jesus and the Word, he wrote:

"Of course the doubt as to whether Jesus really existed is unfounded and not worth refutation. No sane person can doubt that Jesus stands as founder behind the historical movement whose first distinct stage is represented by the oldest Palestinian community"

Concerning the relationship between body, soul, and Spirit, he affirmed a monistic point of view.

Legacy and criticism

Bultmann was an outstanding teacher, and he encouraged independence of mind among his students. The result was two major developments within the “Bultmann school.” In 1954 Ernst Käsemann raised “the question of the historical Jesus” (i.e., the question of the significance of knowledge of the historical Jesus for Christian faith), and a number of Bultmann’s pupils developed a position independent of their teacher’s on the matter. Then Ernst Fuchs and Gerhard Ebeling, building on Bultmann’s existentialist analysis, developed a method of interpreting the New Testament that emphasized the linguistic mode of human existence, giving birth to the so-called new hermeneutic. Bultmann himself took part in these discussions along with his pupils for as long as his health permitted, later living quietly in Marburg, where he died in 1976.

Posthumously, Bultmann’s approach to the New Testament has been subject to increasing criticism, which has led modern scholars to overcome his theorems. According to the theologian and historian of Christianity Larry Hurtado, Bultmann "approached the ancient Christian texts with a theological criterion, a particular formulation of justification by faith, which he used to judge whether the writings were valid or not." John P. Meier believes that Bultmann had a "disconcerting way of solving problems with a few evasive sentences, his arguments do not hold up, despite having been handed down for generations." Bart D. Ehrman, while agreeing with some of Bultmann's positions, underlines that "among our ranks there are no more form critics that agree with the theories of Bultmann, the pioneer of this interpretation". According to Werner H. Kelber, "Today it is no exaggeration to claim that a whole spectrum of main assumptions underlying Bultmann's Synoptic Tradition must be considered suspect."

Bultmann's skeptical approach to the New Testament has received criticism from conservative biblical scholars like Klaus Berger and Craig Blomberg. Form criticism, in particular, has been challenged in recent years by Martin Hengel, Richard Bauckham and Brant J. Pitre, who have reasserted the traditional theory that the Gospels were written by eyewitnesses.

Selected works

• Bultmann, Rudolf K. (1921). Die Geschichte der synoptischen Tradition. - German original
  • ——— (1976). History of the Synoptic Tradition. San Francisco, CA: Harper San Francisco. ISBN 0-06-061172-3. (seminal work on form criticism)
• ——— (1926). Jesus. - German original
  • ——— (1934). Jesus and the Word. Hudson River editions. New York & London: Scribner. ISBN 978-0-684-17596-6. OCLC 20362687.
• ——— (1941). Neues Testament und Mythologie. - German original
  • ——— (1953). Kerygma and Myth: A Theological Debate. London: SPCK. OCLC 878330612. - (contains the essay "The New Testament and Mythology" with critical analyses and Bultmann's response)
  • ——— (1984). The New Testament and Mythology and Other Basic Writings. Augsburg Fortress Press. ISBN 978-0-8006-0727-2. OCLC 10948632.
• ——— (1941). Das Evangelium des Johannes. - German original
  • ——— (1971). The Gospel of John: A Commentary. Philadelphia, PA: Westminster John Knox Press. ISBN 978-0-664-20893-6. OCLC 136267.
• ——— (1948). Theologie des Neuen Testaments. - German original
  • ——— (1961). Theology of the New Testament. London: SCM Press. OCLC 1069331668.
  • ——— (1970). Theology of the New Testament: Complete in One Volume. London: SCM Press. ISBN 978-0-684-41190-3. OCLC 715928440.
• ——— (1949). Das Urchristentum im Rahmen der Antiken Religionen. - German original
  • ——— (1956). Primitive Christianity in its Contemporary Setting. New York: Meridian Books. OCLC 280803.
• ——— (1954). Die Frage der Entmythologisierung. - German original
  • ———; Jaspers, Karl (1958). Myth & Christianity: An Inquiry Into The Possibility Of Religion Without Myth. New York: Noonday Press. OCLC 186641. - In this dialogue with philosopher Jaspers, Jaspers first makes the case that Christianity can not be understood apart from its mythical framework, and that myth is a necessary form of communication through symbol. Bultmann responds that modern scientific analysis of the text is required to separate the genuine from the miraculous claims, thereby revealing the true message.
• ——— (1957). History and Eschatology: The Presence of Eternity (1954–55 Gifford Lectures). Edinburgh: University Press. ISBN 978-0-85224-103-5. OCLC 752549.
• ——— (1958). Jesus Christ and Mythology (Cole lectures, Vanderbilt University, Kent Shaffer memorial lectures). Scribner Library (series) - Lyceum editions. Vol. SL73. New York & London: Scribner. ISBN 978-0-684-71727-2. OCLC 383108.

References

Sources

• Blomberg, Craig L. (1987). The Historical Reliability of the Gospels. Leicester, England: Inter-Varsity Press. ISBN 978-0-87784-992-6.
• Borg, Marcus J. (1994). Jesus in Contemporary Scholarship. A&C Black. ISBN 978-1-56338-094-5.
• Broadhead, Edwin K. (2011). "Implicit Christology and the Historical Jesus". In Holmén, Tom; Porter, Stanley E. (eds.). Handbook for the Study of the Historical Jesus. Vol. 2. Leiden, Netherlands: Brill. pp. 1169–1182. ISBN 978-90-04-17092-6.
• Bultmann, Rudolf (1910). Der Stil der paulinischen Predigt und die kynisch-stoische Diatribe (in German). Göttingen, Germany: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht. Retrieved 3 April 2018.
•  ———  (1971). The Gospel of John: A Commentary.
•  ———  (1984) [1941]. "New Testament and Mythology". In Ogden, Schubert M. (ed.). New Testament and Mythology and Other Basic Writings. Philadelphia: Fortress Press (published 1989). pp. 1–43. ISBN 978-0-8006-2442-2.
•  ———  (1991). "Jesus and the Eschatological Kingdom". In Johnson, Roger A. (ed.). Rudolf Bultmann: Interpreting Faith for the Modern Era. Minneapolis, Minnesota: Fortress Press. pp. 91–102. ISBN 978-0-8006-3402-5.
•  ———  (2004). "New Testament and Mythology: The Mythological Element in the Message of the New Testament and the Problem of Its Re-Interpretation". In Evans, Craig A. (ed.). The Historical Jesus: Critical Concepts in Religious Studies. Volume I: The History of the Quest: Classical Studies and Critical Questions. London: Routledge. pp. 323–358. ISBN 978-0-415-32751-0.
• Busse, Roger S. (2014). To Be Near the Fire: Demonic Possession, Risk Analysis, and Jesus' War on Satan. Eugene, Oregon: Resource Publications. ISBN 978-1-62564-811-2.
• Congdon, David W. (2015a). Rudolf Bultmann: A Companion to His Theology. Eugene, Oregon: Cascade Books. ISBN 978-1-62564-748-1.
•  ———  (2015b). The Mission of Demythologizing: Rudolf Bultmann's Dialectical Theology. Minneapolis, Minnesota: Fortress Press. ISBN 978-1-4514-8792-3.
• Cross, F. L.; Livingstone, E. A., eds. (2005). The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church (rev. 3rd ed.). Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-280290-3.
• Dennison, William D. (2008). The Young Bultmann: Context for His Understanding of God, 1884–1925. American University Studies VII: Theology and Religion. Vol. 241. New York: Peter Lang. ISBN 978-0-8204-8113-5. ISSN 0740-0446.
• Dorrien, Gary (2003). The Making of American Liberal Theology: Idealism, Realism, and Modernity, 1900–1950. Louisville, Kentucky: Westminster John Knox Press. ISBN 978-0-664-22355-7.
• Ericksen, Robert (2012). Complicity in the Holocaust : churches and universities in Nazi Germany. New York: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-1-107-01591-3.
• Hobbs, Edward C., ed. (1985). Bultmann, Retrospect and Prospect: The Centenary Symposium at Wellesley. Fortress Press. ISBN 978-0-8006-7075-7.
• Hammann, Konrad (2013). Rudolf Bultmann: A Biography. Salem, Oregon: Polebridge Press. ISBN 978-1-59815-118-3.
• Jensen, Alexander S. (2014). Divine Providence and Human Agency: Trinity, Creation and Freedom. Farnham, England: Ashgate Publishing. ISBN 978-1-4094-3530-3.
• Jonas, Hans (1982). "Is Faith Still Possible? Memories of Rudolf Bultmann and Reflections on the Philosophical Aspects of His Work". Harvard Theological Review. 75 (1): 1–23. doi:10.1017/S0017816000018186. ISSN 1475-4517. JSTOR 1509661. S2CID 162531107.
• Kelley, Shawn (2002). Racializing Jesus: Race, Ideology and the Formation of Modern Biblical Scholarship. London: Routledge. ISBN 978-0-415-15402-4.
• Labron, Tim (2011). Bultmann Unlocked. London: T&T Clark. ISBN 978-0-567-03153-2.
• Markschies, Christoph (2014). "Individuality in Some Gnostic Authors, with a Few Remarks on the Interpretation of Ptolemy's Epistula ad Florum". In Torrance, Alexis; Zachhuber, Johannes (eds.). Individuality in Late Antiquity. Abingdon, England: Routledge (published 2016). pp. 11–28. ISBN 978-1-315-58841-4.
• McKnight, Scot (2005). "Jesus: Who Was He?: Introduction". In Dunn, James D. G.; McKnight, Scot (eds.). The Historical Jesus in Recent Research. Sources for Biblical and Theological Study. Vol. 10. Winona Lake, Indiana: Eisenbrauns. pp. 271–274. ISBN 978-1-57506-100-9.
• Meier, Holger (2011). Rudolf Bultmann und sein hermeneutischer Ansatz der Entmythologisierung als existentiale Interpretation [Rudopf Bultmann and His Hermeneutic Approach to De-Mythologization as Existential Interpretation] (in German). Munich: GRIN Verlag. ISBN 978-3-656-09464-7.
• Monk, Stephanie D. (2011). "An Examination of the Theology of Bishop John Shelby Spong" (PDF). Global Journal of Classic Theology. 9 (1). ISSN 1521-6055. Retrieved 4 April 2018.
• Mournet, Terence C. (2005). Oral Tradition and Literary Dependency: Variability and Stability in the Synoptic Tradition and Q. Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen zum Neuen Testament. Vol. 195. Tübingen, Germany: Mohr Siebeck. ISBN 978-3-16-148454-4. ISSN 0340-9570. {{cite book}}: |journal= ignored (help)
• Pagliarino, Guido (2018) [2015]. Diavolo e Demòni (un approccio storico) (in Italian). Tektime. ISBN 978-88-7304-437-6.
• Porter, Stanley E. (2015). When Paul Met Jesus: How an Idea Got Lost in History. New York: Cambridge University Press. doi:10.1017/CBO9781316422786. ISBN 978-1-107-12796-8.
• Raupp, Werner (2003). Bultmann. Rudolf (Karl): Biographisch-Bibliographisches Kirchenlexikon (BBKL). Vol. 21. Nordhausen: Bautz. pp. 174–233. ISBN 3-88309-110-3. - (with compact introduction and detailed bibliography)
• Schild, Maurice E. (2016). "Review of Rudolf Bultmann / Günther Bornkamm: Briefwechsel, 1926–1976 Edited by Werner Zager". Lutheran Theological Review. 50 (1): 89–90. ISSN 0024-7553.
• Watson, Duane F.; Hauser, Alan J. (1994). Rhetorical Criticism of the Bible: A Comprehensive Bibliography with Notes on History and Method. Biblical Interpretation Series. Vol. 4. Leiden, Netherlands: Brill. ISBN 978-90-04-09903-6. ISSN 0928-0731.
• Wildman, Wesley, ed. (2018). "Rudolf Bultmann (1884–1976)". Boston Collaborative Encyclopedia of Western Theology. Boston: Boston University. Retrieved 3 April 2018.
• Wood, Lawrence W. (2005). Theology as History and Hermeneutics: A Post-Critical Conversation with Contemporary Theology. Lexington, Kentucky: Emeth Press. ISBN 978-0-9755435-5-9.
• Woodson, Hue (2018). Heideggerian Theologies: The Pathmarks of John Macquarrie, Rudolf Bultmann, Paul Tillich, and Karl Rahner. Eugene, Oregon: Wipf and Stock. ISBN 978-1-5326-4775-8.
• Zetterholm, Magnus (2009). Approaches to Paul: A Student's Guide to Recent Scholarship. Minneapolis, Minnesota: Fortress Press. ISBN 978-0-8006-6337-7.

Further reading

• Bartsch, Hans Werner, ed. (1961). Kerygma and Myth: A Theological Debate. New York: Harper Torchbooks. Archived from the original on 30 May 2006. Retrieved 3 April 2018 – via Religion Online.
• Bultmann, Rudolf (1958) [1934]. Jesus and the Word. Translated by Smith, Louise Pettibone; Lantero, Erminie Huntress. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons. Archived from the original on 2 March 2007. Retrieved 3 April 2018 – via Religion Online.
•  ———  (1960). Existence and Faith: Shorter Writings of Rudolf Bultmann. New York: Meridian Books. LCCN 60006774. Retrieved 3 April 2018.
•  ———  (1962) [1955]. History and Eschatology: The Presence of Eternity. New York: Harper Torchbooks. Retrieved 3 April 2018 – via Gifford Lectures.
• Edwards, David L. (1976). "Rudolf Bultmann: Scholar of Faith". The Christian Century. Vol. 93, no. 27. Chicago. pp. 728–730. ISSN 0009-5281. Retrieved 3 April 2018 – via Religion Online.
• Fergusson, David (1992). Bultmann. London: G. Chapman. ISBN 978-0-225-66626-7.
• Fries, Heinrich (1967). Bultmann-Barth and Catholic Theology. Translated by Swidler, Leonard. Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania: Duquesne University Press. Archived from the original on 1 January 2006. Retrieved 3 April 2018.
• Fuller, Reginald H. (1965). The Foundations of New Testament Christology. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons. Retrieved 3 April 2018.
• Hammann, Konrad (2013). Rudolf Bultmann: A Biography. Translated by Devenish, Philip E. Salem, Oregon: Polebridge Press. ISBN 978-1-59815-118-3.
• Kselman, John S.; Witherup, Ronald D. (1990). "Modern New Testament Criticism". In Brown, Raymond E.; Fitzmyer, Joseph A.; Murphy, Roland E. (eds.). The New Jerome Biblical Commentary. Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice Hall. pp. 1130–1145. ISBN 978-0-13-614934-7.
• McKnight, Edgar V. (1969). What Is Form Criticism?. Guides to Biblical Scholarship: New Testament Series. Philadelphia: Fortress Press. OCLC 714991891.
• Moran, Seán Farrell. "Rudolph Bultmann". The Encyclopedia of Historians and Historical Writing. Vol. 1.
• Smith, Mahlon H. (2018). "Rudolf Karl Bultmann". A Synoptic Gospels Primer: Parallel Texts in Matthew, Mark & Luke. OCLC 60769417. Retrieved 3 April 2018.