"
Bultmann's fallacy: 'Legenden sind die Geschichten vom
leeren Grab, von dem Paulus noch nicht weiss.'{7...(' ...legends
are stories of the empty grave, of the Paulus not yet weiss.')
}
Rudolf Bultmann is a name not known to many but
has been a distinct and powerful influence on modern Theology worldwide. Father
of the "Higher Criticism" School, he was born in 1886 and died in 1976. Known as
an eminent German Extentialist, influenced extensively by the works of Martin
Heidegger, he was educated at universities of Tübingen, Berlin, and Marburg, and
later taught at Marburg. Heidegger and other existentialists of the time had a
motto of "Back to the things themselves" dating to Husserl. Bultmann adopted
this atheistic or agnostic philosophy to apply to the New Testament account of
the Gospels. He is known for what he and his advocates referred to as the
"demythologizing" of the New Testament, and the concept of Higher Criticism
basically placed human rationale over revealed truth in the Scriptures. Bultmann
and his followers 're-interpreted' the Gospels as metaphor whenever in their
view reason (of theologians and modern man) did not meet a comfort level with
supernatural descriptions. He in effect gutted the Gospels of miracles as divine
transactions, interpreting them instead as metaphor applicable to modern life.
In an atmosphere of unbelief and cold , philosophical Christianity which was
losing ground to the new European Existentialists
2 Bultmann offered
the German Churched an alternative to both: an existential christianity devoid
of the points of faith hard to believe and the ability to stay churched in
unbelief. While for modern theologians many saw this as a brave and positive
move, the effect on the German Church was devastating. Influenced by Bultmann,
the European Existentialists, the emerging Social Gospel in America and abroad,
the Church on the verge of the Third Reich was more a Social organization than a
religious one, though steeped in tradition. The remnant of belief in the
Confessing Church, headed by Bonhoeffer and Neimoller, stood not only against
Hitler, but a German Theology which had been greatly changed by Bultmann's
Higher Criticism.
