Editorials

The Bible's best enemy

The Protestant theologian Rudolf Bultmann was born 125 years ago

August 19, 2009

"It is impossible to use electric light and at the same time to believe in the biblical world of demons and spirits." This thought was fundamental to Rudolf Bultmann's radical project of demythologizing the Bible. Demons, angels, heaven and hell: "This is purely mythological language that has been superseded by science."  By reinterpreting the pre-scientific view of the world, Bultmann unlocked the Christian faith for skeptics.  This pastor's son was born 125 years ago on August 20, 1884 in Wiefelstede bei Oldenburg and died in 1976.

Bultmann was among the most prominent Protestant theologians and his name is linked to an entire era of cultural and spiritual history.  He wanted to lay bare the pure message of the gospel, to free Jesus' teaching from the immediate nearness of God to humankind, to make it understandable to the modern world.

To do this, Bultmann liberated the ancient figures of speech from their historically determined mythological content, as for example, the virgin birth or the creation of the world in seven days. The contemporary relevance of this approach is illustrated by the creationism debate. Creationists interpret the biblical creation story literally and reject Charles Darwin's (1809-1882) scientific theory of evolution. 

For around 30 years, Bultmann taught New Testament theology in Marburg and is today an emblematic figure of Christianity's dialogue with modernity. Yet his so-called demythologization project drew him the anger of conservative Christians and church leaders who accused him of heresy and feared the Christian message would be bartered away.  For some people even today, this is a red flag.

The evening news on July 31, 1976, one day after Bultmann's death, claimed that the most radical outcome of Bultmann's internationally recognized works on the demythologization of Christianity was the "denial of the bodily resurrection of Christ", and went on to give an extremely simplified summary of his work.  The theologian passed away in Marburg shortly before his 92nd birthday.

In the dispute over "right teaching," Bultmann was even to face a disciplinary procedure on the part of the church. Lutheran theologians accused him of promoting the "self-dissolution of theology into an atheistic philosophy." Into the early 1950s many warnings about this kind of theology were still being issued from the pulpit.

Yet Bultmann was not antichurch.  Biographer Konrad Hammann remembers his devoutness. Not only did he consider hymns indispensable, but, as a parish council member from 1936 to1951, he "conscientiously discharged his church duties and collected the offering at worship." He was an original member of the Confessing Church, which courageously opposed the ideology of the Nazi regime. On the 100th anniversary of his birth, then council chairperson of the Evangelical Church in Germany, Bishop Eduard Lohse, said that Bultmann had reconnected the church with its real focus: "God and nothing else."

Evangelical Christians nonetheless repeatedly accused him of diluting scripture with philosophical "devices." Bultmann, who had attended the same school as the philosopher Karl Jaspers, a native of Oldenburg, was actually applying the existentialist philosophy of Martin Heidegger (1889-1976). He wrote, "Man's life is moved by the search for God, because it is always moved, consciously or unconsciously, by the question about his own personal existence. The question of God and the question of myself are identical" [Jesus Christ and Mythology, 52-53].

According to Protestant writer and theologian Heinz Zahrnt (1915-2003), Bultmann wanted to liberate Christians from the obsession of literal belief because many people no longer understand the language of the Bible. Religious scholars, however, warned against an overly negative attitude toward myth. Ultimately, the unintelligible can be made intelligible through metaphorical language. The religious experience, they say, can only be represented in symbols.

For Bultmann "demythologization did not imply the elimination of myth, but rather its reinterpretation", said Viennese professor of Protestant theology Ulrich H.J. Körtner. "Faith and myth need to be differentiated." Even if in recent decades the concept of myth has gained new vitality, Bultmann's theology remains totally relevant.

Further reading [German]:

Konrad Hammann, Rudolf Bultmann - Eine Biographie, Verlag Mohr Siebeck 2009, 582 pages, 49 euros.

Andreas Großmann and Christof Landmesser (eds), Rudolf Bultmann/Martin Heidegger: Briefwechsel 1925 bis 1975, Verlag Klostermann 2009, 342 pages, 39 euros.