tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14261952.post8160547941962162417..comments2024-03-25T13:40:30.747-04:00Comments on Faith and Theology: Rudolf Bultmann: Theologie als KritikBen Myershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03800127501735910966noreply@blogger.comBlogger12125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14261952.post-56669707875057281212007-09-28T23:43:00.000-04:002007-09-28T23:43:00.000-04:00Ben, thanks for an excellent review. It's been a l...Ben, thanks for an excellent review. It's been a long time since I heard someone speaking sympathetically about Bultmann - this is an encouraging change!Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14261952.post-80831436380170252212007-09-28T22:37:00.000-04:002007-09-28T22:37:00.000-04:00Hi John -- well, that's a very colourful anecdote!...Hi John -- well, that's a very colourful anecdote!<BR/><BR/>To get the discussion back to Bultmann: Bultmann knew a good deal about the history of mysticism, but he rejected both mysticism and Lutheran pietism in favour of <I>faith</I>, or rather (which is the same thing) in favour of God's <I>address</I> to human beings. In his view, the problem with both mysticism and pietism is that they erase the distinction between God and humanity. For Bultmann, the reality of God is available only to <I>faith</I>, since God encounters us as <I>Word</I>. <BR/><BR/>Thus in his commentary on John's Gospel, Bultmann writes that God liberates us precisely from mysticism itself, "from the circularity of the mystical relationship, in which in the end we can only encounter ourselves"; the address of God's Word "unmasks the mystic's striving for God as a striving to turn God's address into his own human word, which he can hear in the depths of his own soul" (p. 382). Here his main point is that, in Jesus Christ, God speaks to us from <I>beyond</I> ourselves: and for just that reason, Jesus is our salvation.Ben Myershttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03800127501735910966noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14261952.post-51979038013880082012007-09-28T21:43:00.000-04:002007-09-28T21:43:00.000-04:00Ben an example of the limitations of devout Luther...Ben an example of the limitations of devout Lutheran devoutness.<BR/><BR/>My Spiritual Master was the (straight distinctions) prize winning student at a Lutheran Seminary in Philadelphia. <BR/><BR/>Whilst there he was going through an intense inner process of psychic and mystical revelations. Almost every day he would have all kinds of extraordinary mystical experiences. His body was literally on fire as a result of the process.<BR/><BR/>One day he told his very devout and scholarly Lutheran professors about his extraordinary process.<BR/><BR/>They were all totally horrified and offended by the fact that their prize winning student was a "mystic".<BR/><BR/>When he attended Lutheran church services as a boy he used to spontaneously go into mystical reveries. His earnest and completely buttoned down pastor noticed this and out of concern warned him that he might go mad---little did he know who it was that was in front of him.<BR/><BR/>His extraordinary experiences were completely beyond the bounds of "rational" possibility to any of these dreadfully sane "devout" men.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14261952.post-57837066523585014172007-09-28T21:01:00.000-04:002007-09-28T21:01:00.000-04:00Hi John -- I understand your reservations about Bu...Hi John -- I understand your reservations about Bultmann's scientism, etc. But it's a mistake to conclude that was personally "incapable of religious experience" -- as a matter of fact, Bultmann remained a very pious and devout churchgoing Lutheran throughout his life.Ben Myershttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03800127501735910966noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14261952.post-44145642816645440582007-09-28T20:47:00.000-04:002007-09-28T20:47:00.000-04:00The scholarly works of Rudolf Bultmann have had a ...The scholarly works of Rudolf Bultmann have had a profound effect on Christian theological thinking, especially among Protestants. His kind of scholarship is a prime example of a major fault in the Christian Tradition, or even all forms of "official" State religion, which is that religious communication has generally ceased to originate from Realized, saints, mystics and sages and now comes from scholarly "authorities" who, in general, have no sympathy with, or aptitude for, true religious and thus Spiritual practice, experience, or Realization.<BR/><BR/>Rudolf Bultmann was a typical "intellectual believer", whose basic presumptions were those of materialistic scientism. He appears to have felt that profound mystical and Spiritual experiences and persuasions are rather pathological, and should even be culturally suppressed. Altogether he was, by virtue of his materialistic views of reality, psychologically incapable of real religious and thus Spriritual experience, and he was inclined to believe that no one else in the 20th century could, or should, have such experience.<BR/><BR/>Thus Rudolf Bultmann began a project to "de-mythologize" the New Testament. His efforts were based on a materialistic alienation from the truly religious mind and all participatory psychic and Spiritual experience of Divine, and even greater cosmic, Reality.<BR/>Therefore, despite his best intentions, his efforts were basically anti-religious and anti-Spiritual.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14261952.post-76821900116527054702007-09-27T23:04:00.000-04:002007-09-27T23:04:00.000-04:00Ben,Thanks for this wonderful review. I think you...Ben,<BR/><BR/>Thanks for this wonderful review. I think you've done more than anyone else ever has in this one review to make hardened skeptics of Bultmann into curious readers of his work. Bultmann is still viewed with the kind of skepticism that Barth once was among evangelicals (thanks to Van Til). Hopefully, this misunderstanding of Bultmann -- or at least the misguided focus on "demythologization" to the exclusion of everything else he wrote -- will give way to a greater understanding and appreciate of this incredible thinker. Many thanks!David W. Congdonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03009330707703611224noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14261952.post-70842630648338219812007-09-27T21:51:00.000-04:002007-09-27T21:51:00.000-04:00Kip, I really appreciate your question about Bultm...Kip, I really appreciate your question about Bultmann's relation to the natural sciences. I think this question can best be answered with a single word: Pannenberg! Even though Bultmann himself didn't engage with the natural sciences (apart from occasional remarks about "lightbulbs and radio"!), I think there's a direct trajectory leading from Bultmann to Pannenberg. <BR/><BR/>First and foremost, Pannenberg's definition of God as "the all-determining reality" comes directly from Bultmann -- and this definition of God is absolutely fundamental to Pannenberg's whole conception of the science/theology relationship. Indeed, because Pannenberg understands God as "the all-determining reality", he is able to see the dialogue with science not merely as an <I>external</I> dialogue between different disciplines, but as an engagement that is <I>internal</I> to dogmatic thinking itself. <BR/><BR/>Secondly, for Pannenberg, the natural sciences function (I believe) in the same way that "demythologising" functions for Bultmann. It's best to understand demythologising in <I>hermeneutical</I> terms: for Bultmann, the "modern worldview" functions as a basic hermeneutical criterion by which all theological statements must be tested. The point isn't that theology has to be squeezed into a narrowly "modern" mould, but that theological statements have to be <I>intelligible</I> within the general horizons of what we know about the world. <BR/><BR/>Of course, Bultmann's own understanding of this "modern worldview" was rather simplistic and scientistic (rather than scientific). But in Pannenberg's work, Bultmann's demythologising programme achieves extraordinary rigour and refinement, since in Pannenberg's work the horizons of the natural sciences are brought into a direct encounter with the internal logic of dogmatic theology -- so that not only is theology structured by these scientific horizons, but these scientific horizons themselves are also radically altered and re-organised through their encounter with theology.<BR/><BR/>Anyway, not much has been written about Pannenberg's indebtedness to Bultmann, or about the relationship between demythologising and the science/theology dialogue -- but if I ever get around to finishing my book on Bultmann, there'll definitely be a chapter about this....Ben Myershttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03800127501735910966noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14261952.post-77537405565873491482007-09-27T20:24:00.000-04:002007-09-27T20:24:00.000-04:00Ben,many thanks for this review - it is excellent ...Ben,<BR/>many thanks for this review - it is excellent - both informative and passionate - and certainly Bultmann is someone to be enthusiastic about!Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14261952.post-86982730757718783132007-09-27T18:28:00.000-04:002007-09-27T18:28:00.000-04:00Thanks for an excellent review. I haven't read a l...Thanks for an excellent review. <BR/><BR/>I haven't read a lot of Bultmann, but I think the best 'book review' I ever read was Bultmann's essay on Barth's <I>The Resurrection of the Dead</I> - an amazing review of an amazing book.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14261952.post-37285520298439199052007-09-27T16:18:00.000-04:002007-09-27T16:18:00.000-04:00Ben,It�s good to read some positive appreciation f...Ben,<BR/><BR/>It�s good to read some positive appreciation for Bultmann in the form of your review of this book. I agree that Barth and Bultmann were indeed two �architects� of 20th century theology. Bultmann was important because he gave theology so much work to do. After him, NT interpreters could no longer be naive about their presuppositions in approaching the text. And the old relay model of neutral, objective NT exegetes passing on the results of their studies to theologians who then shaped it according to the modern context is now long gone. <BR/><BR/>It is interesting that you raise the disagreement with Schubert Ogden. Ogden had a deep appreciation for Bultmann�s theology, but thought it needed to be supplemented with a philosophical theology (Hartshorne) which was more amenable to the sciences and other modern audiences. Bultmann, it seems, distrusted his theology being placed in a larger systematic context, where the claim of God simply becomes one idea placed alongside others. This took the teeth out of it, so to speak. And yet, how would Bultmann�s theology relate to the sciences, if at all? There is the well known line for Bultmann about it being just as atheistic for a scientist to affirm God as to deny God. Jungel uses this as a jumping-off point to talk about the verbal placelessness of God in society. And yet, would Bultmann simply restrict the domains of theology and the sciences in an exclusive way? Is there another way to relate them or other resources for doing this that are available in Bultmann�s theology?<BR/><BR/>Thanks for your appreciative words for Bultmann and for an excellent blog,<BR/><BR/>Kip IngramAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14261952.post-15788437550375105582007-09-27T13:26:00.000-04:002007-09-27T13:26:00.000-04:00It really is a demanding, but quite rewarding and ...It really is a demanding, but quite rewarding and extraordinary book- or rather, collection of reviews. Bultmann's insightfulness is miraculous.<BR/><BR/>But it will never be translated into English. Reason enough, I think, to learn German.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14261952.post-72051909608878428832007-09-27T12:14:00.000-04:002007-09-27T12:14:00.000-04:00Now for an English translation for those of us wit...Now for an English translation for those of us without great dexterity in the German language!Robert Cornwallhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04581876323110725024noreply@blogger.com