Brainstorm

What problems are there in trying to understand an ancient text?

Why might these problems be especially pressing when trying to

understand a religious text?

Read God-Talk Macquarrie P34 -41 plus notes below. They

answer questions.
 Bultmann Myth and Demythologizing

1. Attempt to Understand the Kerygma

The word ‘kerygma’ means proclamation. The essential proclamation of the

gospel is what Christian theology attempts to understand and communicate.
However this presents essentially the problem of mythology. We cannot write
or think except through the thought forms of our time and culture. In this
sense the writers of New Testament text inevitably wrote mythology and it is
these mythological ways of thinking that obscure our understanding of the
kerygma. For this reason the text is in need of demythologization.

2. The problem of mythology

Schubert Ogden outlines a number of characteristics of mythology as

Bultmann sees it.

1. Myth is a form of objectification. God for example is seen as an object

out there. This linguistic expression is part of a process of bringing
God within the compass of a subject-object relationship. God comes to
fit within our human conceptualisations. Bultmann writes much about
eschatology being a mythical expression of God objectified in the time
continuum at some future date.
2. Myth has an etiological function. It is explanatory, in particular the
universe is explained by means of myth.
3. Myth also gives us a double view of history, a history of God or the
gods and secular history.

Bultmann wants to maintain however that mythological language does have

some value because while it is inaccurate and needs to be analysed and
dismantled, nonetheless it is a genuine attempt to express the faith event, a
personal existential encounter with the divine.

3. Demythologizing

In order to understand the kerygma as a faith event for me, the mythological
language of the text needs translating into an existential conceptualisation.
This understanding of the interpretative task, or hermeneutic, Bultmann calls
demythologization.

The purpose then of demythologization is to present to the reader their own

existential encounter.

Christian preaching is Kerygma, that is, proclamation addressed not to the theoretical
reason, but to the hearer as a self. In this manner Paul commends himself to every
man's conscience in the sight of God (II Cor. 4:2). De-mythologizing will make clear
this function of preaching as a personal message, and in doing so it will eliminate a
false stumbling-block and bring into sharp focus the real stumbling block, the word of
the cross. (Bultmann, Jesus Christ and Mythology, 36)
…………..goes on to describe further the relationship between
demythologization and the kerygma.

Demythologization strips away the "pre-scientific world explanation and ... [the]
objectified understanding of God" utilized by the early Christians (Johnson 41); the
kerygma which remains is best understood as "the word of God, as expressed in the
language of any time and place, and its specific historically conditioned formulation
in the New Testament" (Johnson 28). Thus, Bultmann's demythologizing does not
entirely dispense with all of the New Testament language, for therein is contained the
most pronounced message of authentic existential faith, For the kerygma contained in
the New Testament declares that in order for one to exist in truth, one must die to the
anxious concern for future self-security by taking up the cross of rejection of earthly
over-concern, and cast oneself upon the forgiving grace of the "Wholly Other" God.
This One is the near and distant God (not metaphysically, but spiritually) who stands
ready to pour forgiveness upon the individual who realizes that he or she is not the
defining epicenter of reality, and that the mysterious "Wholly Other" is that ground of
all being which we never escape. The kerygma calls us to renounce, in existential
decision, the arrogant "illusion of self-sufficiency" by which we attempt to distance
ourselves from the "Wholly Other" God. This existential confrontation by the
"Wholly Other" God in the unadulterated kerygma serves to drive the individual to
the existential decision which is both the core of all true religion and the final
destination of Bultmann's profound theological journey.

4. A Critique

• John Macquarrie argues that Bultmann is not entirely clear about the
meaning of myth. On the one hand it means the representation of the
divine and superhuman in human and worldly terms. Yet it also seems
to mean the world view or weltanschaung of a particular time.

Karl Barth

• 1) Through his hermeneutic Bultmann is giving precedence to

soteriology over Christology. The issue for Bultmann is to experience
what the Christ event means to me. However Barth insists that the
focus theologically should be what does the Christ event mean in its
own right, beyond this subjective soteriological perspective? Therefore
Bultmann’s hermeneutic makes theological assumptions that over
emphasise the subjective and soteriology.
• 2) Bultmann can only know that demythologizing is necessary if he has
a pre-understanding of what the New Testament message is and how it
can be known. Yet if he has this pre-understanding then why is
demythologizing necessary?
• Fritz Buri sees demythologization as subscribing to two incompatible
propositions a. that the mythological character of the New Testament is
unintelligible to modern people an b. that the kerygmatic character of
the New Testament may be preserved in the course of
 demythologization. For Buri demythologization does not go far
enough. One must dekerygmatize the New Testament as well as
demythologize it.
• Gadamer points out that Bultmann in attempting to get beneath the
mythological to the existential kernel of the kerygma assumes that
there can be some existential core. However according to Gadamer
we can never achieve objectivity with respect to a text because we can
never escape our own prejudices. We can never get outside our own
prejudices to get a clear perspective about them. As such any attempt
to reach an existential kernel, the kerygma is in vain.
• The idea that there is some existential core that through
demythologization can be found seems to presume a standpoint of
faith.
• Is not the idea that there is some kerygmatic core that is made
existentially present itself a myth in the sense of being a twentieth
century existentialist perspective very much located in that milieu. Post
modernists have argued that we are essentially socially constructed.
Our thoughts and our language are not some veil underneath which
some subjective link can be made with the kerygma of some distant
time and place. We are completely children of our time absolutely
formed by the language and habits of a culture. There is nothing
beneath or beyond this.

Questions

1) Explain what Bultmann means by myth.

2) Explain Bultmann’s program for demythologization and why this
is necessary.
3) Critically assess Bultmann’s attempt to explain how readers can
access the essence of the New Testament.