Rudolf Karl Bultmann (; 20 August 1884 – 30 July 1976) was a German
Lutheran
Lutheranism is one of the largest branches of Protestantism, identifying primarily with the theology of Martin Luther, the 16th-century German monk and reformer whose efforts to reform the theology and practice of the Catholic Church launched ...
theologian
Theology is the systematic study of the nature of the divine and, more broadly, of religious belief. It is taught as an academic discipline, typically in universities and seminaries. It occupies itself with the unique content of analyzing the ...
and professor of the
New Testament
The New Testament grc, Ἡ Καινὴ Διαθήκη, transl. ; la, Novum Testamentum. (NT) is the second division of the Christian biblical canon. It discusses the teachings and person of Jesus, as well as events in first-century Chris ...
at the
University of Marburg. He was one of the major figures of early-20th-century
biblical studies
Biblical studies is the academic application of a set of diverse disciplines to the study of the Bible (the Old Testament and New Testament).''Introduction to Biblical Studies, Second Edition'' by Steve Moyise (Oct 27, 2004) pages 11–12 ...
. A prominent critic of
liberal theology, Bultmann instead argued for an
existentialist interpretation of the New Testament. His
hermeneutical
Hermeneutics () is the theory and methodology of interpretation, especially the interpretation of biblical texts, wisdom literature, and philosophical texts. Hermeneutics is more than interpretative principles or methods used when immediate c ...
approach to the New Testament led him to be a proponent of
dialectical theology.
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
Myth is a folklore genre consisting of narratives that play a fundamental role in a society, such as foundational tales or origin myths. Since "myth" is widely used to imply that a story is not objectively true, the identification of a narrat ...
elements in the New Testament existentially. Bultmann contended that only faith in the
kerygma
Kerygma (from the ancient Greek word ''kérugma'') is a Greek word used in the New Testament for "proclamation" (see Luke 4:18-19, Romans 10:14, Gospel of Matthew 3:1). It is related to the Greek verb (''kērússō''), literally meaning "to cr ...
, 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
''Abitur'' (), often shortened colloquially to ''Abi'', is a qualification granted at the end of secondary education in Germany. It is conferred on students who pass their final exams at the end of ISCED 3, usually after twelve or thirteen ye ...
'' at the Altes Gymnasium in the city of
Oldenburg, and studied
theology
Theology is the systematic study of the nature of the divine and, more broadly, of religious belief. It is taught as an academic discipline, typically in universities and seminaries. It occupies itself with the unique content of analyzing th ...
at
Tübingen. After three terms Bultmann went to the
University of Berlin
Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin (german: Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, abbreviated HU Berlin) is a German public research university in the central borough of Mitte in Berlin. It was established by Frederick William III on the initiative ...
for two terms, and finally to
Marburg
Marburg ( or ) is a university town in the German federal state (''Bundesland'') of Hesse, capital of the Marburg-Biedenkopf district (''Landkreis''). The town area spreads along the valley of the river Lahn and has a population of approximat ...
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
Habilitation is the highest university degree, or the procedure by which it is achieved, in many European countries. The candidate fulfills a university's set criteria of excellence in research, teaching and further education, usually including ...
two years later, he became a lecturer on the
New Testament
The New Testament grc, Ἡ Καινὴ Διαθήκη, transl. ; la, Novum Testamentum. (NT) is the second division of the Christian biblical canon. It discusses the teachings and person of Jesus, as well as events in first-century Chris ...
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
Giessen, spelled Gießen in German (), is a town in the German state (''Bundesland'') of Hesse, capital of both the district of Giessen and the administrative region of Giessen. The population is approximately 90,000, with roughly 37,000 unive ...
, Bultmann returned to Marburg in 1921 as a full professor, and stayed there until his retirement in 1951. His doctoral students included
Hans Jonas
Hans Jonas (; ; 10 May 1903 – 5 February 1993) was a German-born American Jewish philosopher, from 1955 to 1976 the Alvin Johnson Professor of Philosophy at the New School for Social Research in New York City.
Biography
Jonas was born ...
,
Ernst Käsemann,
Günther Bornkamm
Günther Bornkamm (8 October 1905 – 18 February 1990) was a German New Testament scholar belonging to the school of Rudolf Bultmann and a Professor of New Testament at the University of Heidelberg.
Under Adolf Hitler, he opposed the nazificatio ...
,
Helmut Koester, and
Ernst Fuchs. He also taught
Hannah Arendt
Hannah Arendt (, , ; 14 October 1906 – 4 December 1975) was a political philosopher, author, and Holocaust survivor. She is widely considered to be one of the most influential political theorists of the 20th century.
Arendt was born ...
. From autumn 1944 until the end of the
Second World War
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposi ...
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
Martin Heidegger (; ; 26 September 188926 May 1976) was a German philosopher who is best known for contributions to phenomenology, hermeneutics, and existentialism. He is among the most important and influential philosophers of the 20th centu ...
who taught at Marburg for five years. Heidegger's views on
existentialism
Existentialism ( ) is a form of philosophical inquiry that explores the problem of human existence and centers on human thinking, feeling, and acting. Existentialist thinkers frequently explore issues related to the meaning, purpose, and val ...
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
Nazism ( ; german: Nazismus), the common name in English for National Socialism (german: Nationalsozialismus, ), is the far-right totalitarian political ideology and practices associated with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party (NSDAP) i ...
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
An Aryan paragraph (german: Arierparagraph) was a clause in the statutes of an organization, corporation, or real estate deed that reserved membership and/or right of residence solely for members of the "Aryan race" and excluded from such rights a ...
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
The Confessing Church (german: link=no, Bekennende Kirche, ) was a movement within German Protestantism during Nazi Germany that arose in opposition to government-sponsored efforts to unify all Protestant churches into a single pro-Nazi German ...
, 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
Marburg ( or ) is a university town in the German federal state (''Bundesland'') of Hesse, capital of the Marburg-Biedenkopf district (''Landkreis''). The town area spreads along the valley of the river Lahn and has a population of approximat ...
.
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
gospel
Gospel originally meant the Christian message (" the gospel"), but in the 2nd century it came to be used also for the books in which the message was set out. In this sense a gospel can be defined as a loose-knit, episodic narrative of the words a ...
s, and the historically-oriented principles of "
form criticism" of which Bultmann was the most influential exponent.
According to Bultmann's definition, " e 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
The Gospel of John ( grc, Εὐαγγέλιον κατὰ Ἰωάννην, translit=Euangélion katà Iōánnēn) is the fourth of the four canonical gospels. It contains a highly schematic account of the ministry of Jesus, with seven "sig ...
, 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
Supernatural refers to phenomena or entities that are beyond the laws of nature. The term is derived from Medieval Latin , from Latin (above, beyond, or outside of) + (nature) Though the corollary term "nature", has had multiple meanings si ...
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. This approach led Bultmann to reject doctrines such as the
pre-existence of Christ
The pre-existence of Christ asserts the existence of Christ before his incarnation as Jesus. One of the relevant Bible passages is where, in the Trinitarian interpretation, Christ is identified with a pre-existent divine hypostasis (substan ...
. 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
In Christianity, evangelism (or witnessing) is the act of preaching the gospel with the intention of sharing the message and teachings of Jesus Christ.
Christians who specialize in evangelism are often known as evangelists, whether they are ...
task, clarifying the ''
kerygma
Kerygma (from the ancient Greek word ''kérugma'') is a Greek word used in the New Testament for "proclamation" (see Luke 4:18-19, Romans 10:14, Gospel of Matthew 3:1). It is related to the Greek verb (''kērússō''), literally meaning "to cr ...
'', 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
Theology is the systematic study of the nature of the divine and, more broadly, of religious belief. It is taught as an academic discipline, typically in universities and seminaries. It occupies itself with the unique content of analyzing th ...
in
story form, teaching lessons in the familiar language of
myth
Myth is a folklore genre consisting of narratives that play a fundamental role in a society, such as foundational tales or origin myths. Since "myth" is widely used to imply that a story is not objectively true, the identification of a narrat ...
. 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
The Christ myth theory, also known as the Jesus myth theory, Jesus mythicism, or the Jesus ahistoricity theory, is the view that "the story of Jesus is a piece of mythology", possessing no "substantial claims to historical fact". Alternatively ...
. 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 persone can doubt that Jesus stands as founder behind the historical movement whose first distinct stage is represented by the oldest Palestinian community"
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
Gerhard Ebeling (1912–2001) was a German Lutheran theologian and with Ernst Fuchs a leading proponent of new hermeneutic theology in the 20th century.
Life
Ebeling was born on 6 July 1912 in Steglitz, Berlin, where he attended the gymnasi ...
, 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
Marburg ( or ) is a university town in the German federal state (''Bundesland'') of Hesse, capital of the Marburg-Biedenkopf district (''Landkreis''). The town area spreads along the valley of the river Lahn and has a population of approximat ...
, 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
Larry Weir Hurtado, (December 29, 1943 – November 25, 2019), was an American New Testament scholar, historian of early Christianity, and Emeritus Professor of New Testament Language, Literature, and Theology at the University of Edinburgh ( ...
, 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
Bart Denton Ehrman (born 1955) is an American New Testament scholar focusing on textual criticism of the New Testament, the historical Jesus, and the origins and development of early Christianity. He has written and edited 30 books, includin ...
, 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".
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
Martin Hengel (14 December 1926 – 2 July 2009) was a German historian of religion, focusing on the " Second Temple Period" or "Hellenistic Period" of early Judaism and Christianity.
Biography
Hengel was born in Reutlingen, south of Stuttgart, ...
,
Richard Bauckham and
Brant Pitre
Brant James Pitre (born 1975 in New Orleans, Louisiana) is a New Testament scholar and Distinguished Research Professor of Scripture at the Augustine Institute. He has written extensively on the historical Jesus, the Virgin Mary, Paul the Apostle ...
, who have reasserted the traditionalist theory that the Gospels were written by eyewitnesses.
Selected works
* - German original
** (seminal work on form criticism)
* - German original
**
* - German original
**
- (contains the essay "The New Testament and Mythology" with critical analyses and Bultmann's response)
**
* - German original
**
* - German original
**
**
* - German original
**
* - German original
** - 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.
*
*
Notes
References
Footnotes
Sources
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
* - (with compact introduction and detailed bibliography)
*
*
*
*
*
*
Further reading
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Bultmann, Rudolf
1884 births
1976 deaths
20th-century German Protestant theologians
Christian existentialists
Existentialist theologians
German biblical scholars
German Lutheran theologians
German male non-fiction writers
Grand Crosses with Star and Sash of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany
Recipients of the Pour le Mérite (civil class)
Hermeneutists
Humboldt University of Berlin alumni
New Testament scholars
People from Ammerland
People from Oldenburg (state)
Religious naturalists
University of Marburg alumni
University of Marburg faculty
University of Tübingen alumni
Lay theologians
Lutheran biblical scholars
Protestants in the German Resistance
20th-century Lutherans
Scholars of Mandaeism