Rudolf Bultmann and the Individualised Moment of Redemption

Girton College

University of Cambridge

August 1999

In the 1999 movie The Matrix Keanu Reeves has to face up to realising that reality is not what it seems. The way things appear, the ‘matrix’, is precisely the dream-world creation of a malicious set of machines feeding off the life-forces of humans originally harnessed and then harvested to provide the energy for the functioning of the automatons.

In one sense, one may be forgiven for envisaging the script writer as a good Cartesian since precisely René Descartes’ philosophy is founded, in his infamous ‘method of doubt’, on the potential and actual deceptiveness of sensory experience. Perhaps, he finds irresistible, we may be dreaming, the sleeping lacking insight into their own dormant condition. Who can tell? In other words, things are not as they appear to view. In another sense, however, the apocalyptic backdrop of the movie, that the situation and the subsequent action is introduced as the consequences of nuclear holocaust, the burnt offering (holocaust) by humans of its own race in the name of the gods of mammon and technological progress, is a mood missed by Descartes’ overconfident ‘enlightenment’ humanity (note the reference to light overcoming the darkness implied in the term ‘enlightenment’, and in whose presence the enlightened is enabled to see).

Much of Christian eschatology, particularly that associated with the so-called ‘theologians of hope’ (Jürgen Moltmann, Wolfhart Pannenberg, et al) also operates on the assumption that things will not be as they currently appear to be. God’s future will recreate all things anew, and the light of that eschaton irradiates the darknesses of the present for those ‘with eyes to see’. Indeed, apocalyptic has made something of ‘a come back’ (with Pannenberg, for example). What the horizon of God’s absolute future for the world teaches is that of itself, and through its own devices, the world is more likely to drive itself to apocalyptic nightmares, in which the only visions are those better not seen, than to an evolved telos.

Within the twentieth century’s ‘rediscovery’ of eschatological themes as central to theology the figure of Rudolf Bultmann hovers. ‘Hovers’ rather than engages with the fray since his reflections constitute something of a defiance of the direction that eschatology was taking in, firstly, the christomorphic eschatology of Karl Barth’s and, secondly, the ontological futurism of the ‘theologians of hope’. Indeed, Bultmann’s own thematics inadvertently nod back towards Descartes – not merely in the ‘things are not as they seem’ scenario common both to Cartesian epistemology and Christian eschatology, but to his infamous shaping of the individualised modern atomised self. It is this individualised ego who becomes the eschatological centre for Bultmannian existentialism, not the thinking self of the Cartesian cogitio but rather the feeling and choosing self of Heideggerian philosophy. This self is not only the judge of the meaning, but itself is the meaning of eschatological statements once they have been ‘demythologised’ (‘translated’ into their meaning for modern human eyes).

What is concerning is precisely that this focus not only does an injustice to the christological focus of eschatological assertions, something well expressed by Karl Barth and Karl Rahner among others, but that it undermines the sense of hope’s ethical praxis and therefore verges on quietism – a price that atomisation of the self has to pay. Ironically twentieth century theologians have rethought themes of eschatology and hope since the making famous of Marx’s critique that thoughts of heaven (although Bultmann’s ‘heaven’ is a very different, and much more earthly rooted, type than the one Marx had his sights set on) distract from the business of critiquing, challenging and transforming present actual injustices.

To use such generalised language as ‘everyone knows’ would be rather too easily setting oneself up for a fall. However, in relation to the history of academic eschatology it would be tempting to adopt some general discourse, for talk of a ‘rediscovery of eschatology’ has become almost a cliché, as the discussions of the textbooks makes plain. As Phan, for example, argues

Indeed, Schwarz even goes as far as suggest that "Biblical eschatology has dominated twentieth century theology more than any other topic".

Credit for this is most appropriately attributed to the work of Johannes Weiss and Albert Schweitzer. Bultmann stands firmly within the main lines of the Weiss-Schweitzer portrait of biblical eschatology, particularly in accepting in principle their view that Jesus proclaimed the imminent in-breaking of an apocalyptic kingdom. Indeed, for Bultmann, this is a central category through which to comprehend Jesus’ message. This message is characterised as an eschatological message of the two aeons, standing in the historical context of "pessimistic-dualistic" Jewish expectations about the end of the old aeon and the world and God’s new future, and that an imminent end. Jesus points to the signs of the time and proclaims that God’s reign is dawning, rather than already here. At the same time, he (his presence, his deeds, his message) is ‘the sign of the time’.

Like Schweitzer’s infamous treatment of the apparent failure of Jesus’ eschatological hope, Bultmann thought that Jesus expected the kingdom of God to begin at his death and went up to Jerusalem to purify the Temple in preparation for it. As the bearer of the word, he demands from his audience a decision for or against him which is simultaneously a decision for or against God and therefore implies a christology.

The problem with this, Bultmann claimed, is that contemporaneity cannot make sense of these images and expectations. The kingdom did not interrupt the course of history, as Jesus had imagined. "Of course, Jesus was mistaken in thinking that the world was destined to come to an end."

This delay of the parousia and consequent temporal extension of the interim is keenly felt in the New Testament. That impatience exists, that despairing questions are heard, is shown even by the synoptic tradition with its admonitions to watchfulness and its emphasis that the day will come like a thief in the night. The warning that the day will come unexpectedly, like a thief, is also echoed elsewhere.

But Bultmann interpreted the significance of Jesus’ message in a quite different way from Weiss and Schweitzer. They had rediscovered the essential eschatological import of Jesus’ message, and had raised an important barrier to the simplistic Liberal assumption of an ethical teacher by indicating that Jesus was rather an preacher of the apocalyptic. Subsequently, they were only able to reject Jesus’ teachings as mere products of their time from which, according to Schweitzer, modern humanity could legitimately glean inspiration for ability to renounce the values of the world and for the acceptance of the importance of love. According to Weiss,

In other words, while rejecting the ease with which certain Liberal theologians created the historical Jesus in their own image, the theological conclusions of Weiss and Schweitzer were not too dissimilar. These two thinkers, then, did not belong to their own school of thought, Bowman claims. Similarly, Hebblethwaite declares that

In one very real sense, then, as has been suggested, Bultmann’s approach followed the basic pattern of this reading of the ‘historical Jesus’. Yet, in another sense, he reinstated the possibility of the contemporary theological usefulness of eschatological discourse. Bultmann is famous for his comment that modern ‘man’ (a term he intended inclusively) cannot legitimately recconcile possession of the ‘wireless’ and the ‘light-bulb’ with belief in the miracles of New Testament. A similar attitude features heavily in his treatment of the New Testament’s eschatology.

The eschatology of the bible, especially that of the apocalyptic writings, according to Bultmann, was thoroughly mythological in form. Parousia, resurrection, the end of the world, heaven and hell were all mythological ideas in the sense of ways representing the eternal and the beyond in vivid this-worldly picture-language. Consequently, Bultmann draws a sharp contrast between the biblical thought-world and that of contemporaneity and consequently attempted a hermeneutic of ‘demythologisation’ of the concepts into contemporary thought-forms (for Bultmann, this was existentialism). As Travis summarises,

Now if the biblical myths are to be interpreted, how are they to be interpreted? What is the underlying truth of the myths which can provide the key to correct interpretation? Whereas Rahner perceives the hermeneutical criterion to be christological, Bultmann’s claim is that they have to be interpreted existentially, i.e., that the true meaning of the myths lies in their understanding of human existence. "Myth should be interpreted not cosmologically, but anthropologically, or better still, existentially."

Bultmann therefore asserts that eschatology in the sense of a universal change in nature and history must be discarded, because it is part of a past mythical world-view. The surprising fact, according to Bultmann, is that the mythical world-view of the New Testament does not lend itself to a strictly cosmological interpretation. To obtain its real meaning, it must be interpreted in anthropological or existential terms. Instead of taking the apocalyptic imagery literally, we should ask for its existential meaning.

Their existential meaning was not some future series of events but rather the ever-present possibility of an end to my worldly, inauthentic existence, and a beginning to the authentic life of faith. For Bultmann the crucial thing about Jesus’ ministry and proclamation was that it created a crisis demanding a decision.

In his demythologising programme, then, the kingdom is ever coming and thus ceases to be a future event that is and can be hoped for. Since the decision is a continual decision, the kingdom of God is not an event in time. Thus the kingdom, emptied of its temporal content, transcends time without ever entering it. In short, Bultmann sees the kingdom of God primarily in existentialist fashion as the hour for the individual’s decision. Bultmann thus claimed to reach the heart of Jesus’ message by demythologising it in the categories of Heidegger’s existentialism.

Accordingly, the ‘de-eschatologised’ message of John and the later epistles of Paul, which abandoned emphasis on a temporally future parousia but retained the existential dimension, was the authentic development from Jesus’ message. Bultmann’s view, therefore, involves a significant element of ‘realised eschatology’.

Bultmann, hence does believe the New Testament to lend some kind of weight to the type of eschatology he deems significant for contemporaneity. The reason for this particularly derives from the notion of the delay of the parousia, a concept which has given some New Testament critics the basis for assessing the difference in the presentation of eschatology by the Fourth Gospel from that of the Synoptics.

Faced with the difficult prospect of perceiving this expectation as meaningless and erroneous, the early church reinterpreted her founder’s eschatological message. The singular character of Jesus was then explicated by the early church when it understood "Jesus as the one whom God by the resurrection has made Messiah", and so "awaited him as the coming Son of Man".

Since God raised Jesus from the dead and made him Messiah, exalting him to be

Jesus’ coming, cross and resurrection had the meaning of an eschatological occurrence, and therefore the earliest church regarded itself as a community of the end of days. It is this element of eschatological ‘realisation’ that Bultmann presses as significant for contemporaneity. And yet, in terms of the message and mission of Jesus, as decipherable from the evidence attributable to the kerygma of the earliest believers, the kingdom of God is conceived as a future, eschatological, supra-historical and supernatural entity, which places the person at the moment of decision. It is clear, Bultmann maintains, that Jesus and the New Testament writers believed in a future eschaton. They thought that the end of history and of the world was about to commence. Accordingly, ‘man between the times’ is, first of all, man waiting - waiting for the breaking in of the new aeon, for the parousia of Christ.

Since the hoped-for parousia did not occur, Christians eventually doubted the immediate coming of the end of the world in a more and more distant and unknown future. In ‘Man Between the Times’, Bultmann points to the conviction present in the New Testament writers, and others soon after, that the end of the times has actually come. This move, he says,

Bultmann characterises the early church as an eschatological community. When the earliest church proclaimed Jesus as the coming Messiah or the Son of Man, it stayed within the frame of Jewish eschatological expectations. The earliest community understood itself to be standing ‘between the times’, an ‘interim’ people, namely , at the end of the old aeon and at the beginning of the new one (see 1 Cor. 15:23-7). The difference between these Christians and the Jewish apocalypticists was that the former believed that the new aeon is already breaking in and that its powers are already at work and could be discerned. So

Moreover, the Christian community has been, in a certain sense, already freed from the old aeon and belongs to the new one. It understands itself as the community of the last days, as the true Israel, the ‘elect’ and ‘saints’.

In the New Testament a distinction is already perceivable between the expected end and the goal of history. While in Jewish apocalyptic, history is still interpreted in the context of eschatology, for Paul history is dissolved into eschatology. The latter has lost its meaning as the goal of history and is now understood as the goal of the individual human being. What really matters is not world history but the history of the individual and the encounter with Christ, because in confrontation with this eschatological event the individual is enabled to exist truly historically. Again Bultmann finds support in New Testament writers. Paul emphasises that the turn of the aeons has occurred, from the aeon of sin to the aeon of freedom from sin in faith, and that in Christ the realisation of the future has become a present possibility. Judgment and resurrection are happening now, when we die and rise with Christ in our baptism, and the believer who is in Christ becomes a new creation. Our existence is no longer tied to the past. The future is open to us in the dialectic of indicative and imperative, an existence according to flesh or according to spirit. Though Paul still describes the eschatological judgment in apocalyptic terms as a future event, decisive is what now happens to our own existence, hence Bultmann speaks of faith as an eschatological occurrence for Paul. Neither is it necessary, therefore, for us today to understand the goal of history as some apocalyptic cataclysm. Even Paul’s hope that the great drama of eschatological events might occur during his lifetime is labelled by Bultmann an unimportant sideline in Paul’s actual eschatological outlook.

In his endeavour to demonstrate that New Testament eschatology should be interpreted in existential categories, Bultmann refers extensively to the Johannine writings. While Paul is indebted to Jewish apocalyptic terminology, John uses Gnostic terms to convey an eschatological gospel. John employs gnostic dualisms between light and darkness, truth and lie, above and below, and freedom and bondage - a dualism usually understood cosmologically as denoting certain ‘localities’ - to communicate the gospel. Again Bultmann contends that John transposes this cosmological dualism into "a dualism of decision". Confronted with Jesus, humanity must decide for light or darkness, for God or against God. Thus Jesus’ coming is the judgment, and our reaction to revelation becomes decisive. Salvation becomes a present occurrence: whoever accepts Jesus as God’s revelation has eternal life and has passed through judgment.

The Gospel of John, in its emphasis on the present as the time of salvation, is seen by Bultmann as a protest against the traditional, dramatic, and primitive eschatology. Yet he cannot avoid noting that some passages in John do nevertheless point to a future eschaton (Jn 6:44, 54). But Bultmann assumes that a later editor interpolated these references. While the actual existence of such a later churchly editor is not uncontested by other scholars, Bultmann's own hypothesis would attest to the fact that, contrary to his claim, Christian theology cannot exist in the long run without a future goal of history. If the original writer of the Gospel of John indeed omitted the hope for a future fulfilment and completion of nature and history, a later generation found it necessary to reintroduce the future dimension of history.

Consequently, Bultmann argues that God’s purposes for the future can be spoken of only with great reserve. Although Jesus himself shared his contemporaries’ expectation of a great eschatological drama, he refrained from depicting the details of heaven and hell; he refused to calculate the time of the end. His message "is free from all the learned and fanciful speculation of the apocalyptic writers."

Similarly, "the Christian hope knows that it hopes, but it does not know what it hopes for". In face of death the Christian can hope because he is assured of resurrection in a specific and desirable form – "for all pictures of a glory after death can only be the wishful images of imagination" - but simply because "for him who is open to all that is future as the future of the coming God, death has lost its terror". As Travis argues, one of the merits of Bultmann’s position is in reminding one that language about the parousia is not intended merely to satisfy curiosity about the future, but rather to influence actions and attitudes in the present time.

For Bultmann the Christ-event and the preaching of the Christ-event constitute the eschatological moment in which, as I hear the Word, my existence is put in question. Bultmann asserts that "we are confronted with the eschaton in the Now of encounter". Two quotations serve to illustrate this interpretation:

It has frequently been complained that Bultmann’s analysis of faith and the existential decision leads him into the murky waters of an individualism whose ethic permits little or no room for social behaviour, critique or transformation and room for ecclesiology.

Bultmann interpreted Jesus as not advocating a theory of social or individual ethics. Rather, he taught that one should obey God and love one’s neighbour. But Bultmann went further and maintained that Jesus saw humanity as insecure before that which confronted him in each new moment. It is true that Jesus had no set of rules, but Bultmann contends that belief in God is stifled by living together with other persons, and such living together presents a danger

Bultmann continued to show how individual humanity could lose its individualistic existence in the community. This excessive stress on the individual's existence does less than justice to the New Testament idea of loving the neighbour. An isolated self is not necessarily spared the arrogance and false security which befall those who get lost in the community. It is quite difficult to see how one can make responsible decisions in loving the neighbour and at the same time remain an isolated self.

The exaggerated individualism of Bultmann neglects the doctrine of the church. Macquarrie noted with amazement that Bultmann's Theology of the New Testament discusses nearly 150 Greek terms but omits the word koinonia. Of course, Bultmann does not completely ignore the church. He is a churchman and has contributed significantly to the church of his day. He interpreted Paul’s view of the church as a community of the faithful called of God and constituted by the Word. Paul saw the church as a continuation of the Christ event, the body of Christ. It is a community, but in essence is invisible, an eschatological community whose members have already been taken out of the world.

This minimal emphasis on the doctrine of the church is rather astonishing. The proclamation of the kerygma is very important to Bultmann; only the church makes this proclamation. In the New Testament, faith comes about by hearing the proclaimed Word and results in an involvement with other believers. The New Testament believers shared their lives, dangers, hopes, and even their property. This witnessing community is always a part of the proclaiming event. Does not this witness contribute materially to the credibility of the assertions and challenge of the gospel? Does not such witness have a bearing on the individual’s pre-understanding and self-understanding? Today, when a person hears this gospel proclaimed calling him to faith, does he hear it as an isolated individual or one in the context of a community of faith which helps him understand the choice before him?

Faith, for Bultmann, is that moment of self-understanding and of understanding the world, and of eschatological occurrence which makes the authentic life one of hope and joy. The new self-understanding of faith is a radically personal transformation. The individual is changed from a self-centred, isolated slave to the world into a new person with a new understanding of God, world and self. Therefore, there is the potential in Bultmann’s understanding of faith and transformed understanding and obedience to open his theology ‘outwards’ towards the ‘other’. Authenticity is that of personal commitment and obedience of the individual to God. And surely part of this commitment is to love others as expressed in the life of Jesus, and also that commitment is born and developed in correspondence with the faith of the community? Bultmann, in citing Paul, argues that humanity seeks the good of the neighbour in her faith active in love (Gal. 5:6), deciding in the interests of other people and even becoming a slave in order to help them (1 Cor. 9:19). So Bultmann argues that

Moreover, Bultmann argues that faith brings freedom from the world in the sense that instead of living in the false security of the world, humanity in its radical surrender to God is open for what God demands. Hence there is a critical note in Bultmann’s theology as to theology’s relation to the world.

However, Bultmann fails to emphasise and develop these themes, as well as that of the developing history of the individual. Certainly he does recognise that faith is not a static possession, received once and enjoyed forever more, but due to its personal and relational nature it is an act, and a miraculous one at that, and an ongoing participation as a gift from God. It is a recurring event rather than an intrinsic quality of being.

Nevertheless, "[s]ubjectivity is clearly the nature of faith to Bultmann." He "tends to regard the human self independently of social, economic and political forces." Firstly, Bultmann’s stress is in the individual, and his/her encounter with God. So when discussing ‘sin’ Bultmann stress sin as unbelief, the self’s surrender to the world, slavery and death, and does little to explicate the either the institutionalising of sin in the structures of society or its societal consequences in its effects. He moves some ways towards this when he discusses sin as self-surrender to the world. Therefore, Fergusson argues that Bultmann's "conception of what it is to be human is too restrictive; a more relational understanding of human existence is called for."

Consequently, Bultmann's theology is also characterised by generalisations in his discussion of the individual. Despite his best intentions, the initial setting of Bultmann’s theology has abstracted from the reality of the human situation. The contextual and relational nature of all human existence is lost sight of in the encounter with the Word of God. As a result, the physical and social dimension of life is always likely to appear as something of second-order importance from a theological perspective. Even worse, it may result in a concealed quietism which tacitly accepts the status quo. The insistence on the centrality of a divine-human encounter which prescinds from every political context may reinforce the legitimacy of those circumstances in which that encounter takes place. Recent liberation theologies have effectively analysed the concealed political assumptions that govern the form and content of all theology, and it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that Bultmann was insufficiently critical of the assumptions that underlay his own hermeneutic.

So also Bultmann’s concept of faith as leap which has no objectively informational content is perilously close to fideism and obscurantism. Certainly Bultmann is conscious of not wanting to drive ‘God’ into the nether regions of the individual’s psychology, for he does not deny the ‘objectifying’ of God. What he wants to do is to re-emphasise the personal and transformatory personal encounter with God in faith. God is not an empirical datum which may be discussed from some external vantage point, but an extremely personal reality known only in encounter and the crisis of decision for him. But, as Fergusson argues, it could be pressed that Bultmann’s disjoining of faith and ‘objectivity’ results in a false antithesis.

Bultmann, Fergusson further argues, is in danger of reducing faith to human self-description. So some of Bultmann’s closest followers remain uneasy with his assertion that the account of the historical life of Jesus is largely irrelevant to the Christian proclamation.

Secondly, it is here that Moltmann’s critique of the immediacy of revelation in Bultmann’s scheme is well justified. For Bultmann, revelation is God’s self-disclosure. In true dialectical fashion, Bultmann never tires of pointing out that revelation does not consist of propositional truth about God, but is God's disclosure of himself. Revelation is personal address. Revelation is that event in which I am called into question and changed in my innermost being. However, Bultmann’s actualism has been called into question by Bonhoeffer.

Thirdly, although Bultmann speaks in Pauline fashion of ‘being-in-the-world’ but not ‘being-of-the-world’, he understands this as detachment from the world.

Hebblethwaite declares that

And it seems as if too has transferred the reference point of eschatological language entirely from the future to the present. "I do not see why it is necessary to think of a temporal end of time". He even takes the notion of living ‘between the times’ to refer not to chronological time but to the believer’s constant openness to the future. This means of course that the future does not disappear entirely from Bultmann’s theology; for the authentic life of faith, made possible by this Word, is a matter of facing the future with confidence and faith. The man of faith is unafraid of the future, including death. He cannot picture a future beyond death, but his trust in God’s word has the character of unshakeable hope even in face of death.

Many criticisms have been made of Bultmann’s existentialist interpretation. It has been accused of excessive individualism, of having nothing to say about God’s purpose in creation and providence, of failing to do justice to Christian hope for the future realisation of the kingdom of God, whether on earth or in heaven. A Christianity pared down to the moment of the Word of God and the faith of the individual, however religiously powerful its existential force, is an impoverished Christianity. Moreover, as Moltmann argues, if in the moment of revelation one already comes ‘to himself’ in that authenticity which is at once both original and final, then

Hence Moltmann characterises Bultmann's eschatology as "a new form of the ‘epiphany of the eternal present’".

Bultmann’s eschatology of the moment of existential faith not only neglects the temporality and historicity of successiveness of existence, but it also packages existence too neatly. Bultmann stresses the move from inauthenticity to authenticity in the moment of decision, but in so doing negates any possible tragic perspective. As Ashcroft points out,

The problem and significance of this is conspicous by its absence in Bultmann. What hope is there for them? Ashcroft continues,

Yet Bultmann does pose a very serious question: how can we still accept a future eschaton entailing God's provision of a new world and a total transformation of the present, without asserting at the same time that this is to be accomplished by us? Schwarz consequently argues that "We seem to know the laws of this world too well to be open to such a surprise."

© John C. McDowell