Documente Academic
Documente Profesional
Documente Cultură
doi:10.1111/j.1468-2400.2007.00329.x
When [Gods] reality lights up before us, then the whole immeasurable world is
transformed for us and we too are transformed. Wilhelm Herrmann
* Centre for the History of European Discourses, Forgan Smith Tower, Level 5, The
University of Queensland, Brisbane QLD 4072, Australia.
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2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street Malden, MA 02148, USA.
22 Benjamin Myers
1 Rudolf Bultmann, Das Problem der natrlichen Theologie , Glauben und Verstehen:
Gesammelte Aufstze, 4 vols. (Tbingen: J.C.B. Mohr [Paul Siebeck], 193365), vol. 1,
p. 297 (hereafter cited as GuV); ET Faith and Understanding, ed. Robert W. Funk
(London: SCM Press, 1969), p. 316.
2 Rudolf Bultmann, Bultmann Replies to His Critics, in Kerygma and Myth: A
Theological Debate, ed. Hans Werner Bartsch, trans. Reginald H. Fuller, 2 vols. (London:
SPCK, 195362), vol. 1, p. 199.
3 Rudolf Bultmann, Das Problem der Hermeneutik, GuV, vol. 2, p. 233; ET New
Testament and Mythology and Other Basic Writings, ed. Schubert M. Ogden
(Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1984), p. 88.
4 Rudolf Bultmann, Jesus Christ and Mythology (New York: Charles Scribners Sons,
1958), p. 73.
5 Rudolf Bultmann, On the Problem of Demythologizing, in New Testament and
Mythology, p. 115.
6 Karl Barth, Rudolf Bultmann An Attempt to Understand Him, in Kerygma and Myth,
vol. 2, p. 86.
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Faith as Self-Understanding 23
7 Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics III/2, ed. T.F. Torrance and G.W. Bromiley (Edinburgh: T.
& T. Clark, 1960), p. 446.
8 Barth, Rudolf Bultmann An Attempt to Understand Him, p. 115.
9 Barth, Church Dogmatics III/2, p. 446.
10 Helmut Thielicke, The Restatement of New Testament Mythology, in Kerygma and
Myth, vol. 1, p. 147.
11 Thomas C. Oden, Radical Obedience: The Ethics of Rudolf Bultmann (Philadelphia:
Westminster Press, 1964), p. 131.
12 T.F. Torrance, Theological Science (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1969), pp. 327,
32930.
13 Helmut Gollwitzer, The Existence of God as Confessed by Faith, trans. James W. Leitch
(London: SCM Press, 1965), p. 28.
14 Donald G. Bloesch, Holy Scripture: Revelation, Inspiration and Interpretation (Downers
Grove: IVP, 1994), pp. 249, 254.
15 Paul D. Molnar, Incarnation and Resurrection: Toward a Contemporary Understanding
(Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2007), p. 19.
16 David Bentley Hart, The Beauty of the Infinite: The Aesthetics of Christian Truth (Grand
Rapids: Eerdmans, 2003), p. 22.
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24 Benjamin Myers
II
17 See, for example, Herbert Braun, Gesammelte Studien zum Neuen Testament und seiner
Umwelt (Tbingen: J.C.B. Mohr [Paul Siebeck], 1962), pp. 243309.
18 Rudolf Bultmann, Die Eschatologie des Johannes-Evangeliums, GuV, vol. 1, p. 148; ET
Faith and Understanding, p. 179.
19 Rudolf Bultmann, Die Bedeutung des geschichtlichen Jesus fr die Theologie des
Paulus, GuV, vol. 1, p. 212; ET Faith and Understanding, p. 245.
20 Rudolf Bultmann, Gnade und Freiheit, GuV, vol. 2, p. 160; ET Essays: Philosophical
and Theological, trans. James C.G. Greig (New York: Macmillan, 1955), p. 180.
21 Bultmann, Jesus Christ and Mythology, p. 74.
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Faith as Self-Understanding 25
converted to Christianity.40 If faith were such an experience, then one could look
back on it with satisfaction, perhaps hoping that it would occasionally repeat itself.
But as the movement and determination of ones whole existence, faith is never a
mere experience, and there is no moment in which the person of faith is released
from the obedience of constantly living out of the grace of God.41
Faith can be a determination of our existence only if it is always new, only if it
is an act in which we respond continually to the living Word of God. In the language
of the Fourth Gospel, faith is our abiding in Gods Word. And this abiding,
Bultmann writes, is not something that is appended to faith, but it is the very nature
of faith, so that faith can only be an ever-new act of fidelity.42 In Pauline language,
Bultmann similarly observes that faith is a how, a way of life itself, which becomes
valid only in the act of walking.43 Faith is thus authentic only to the extent that it is
enacted in each new moment not as a single experience, but as a continuing
movement of radical fidelity.
This means that we can never rest secure in any past experience of faith; we can
never turn Gods Word into an object by presuming that we have possessed it once
and for all. Because faith is self-understanding, because it is a constitution and
determination of ones existence as a whole, it can only be a new act which occurs
in each Now, just as Gods eschatological Word continues to address us in the krisis
of the present. The Word of God never becomes our property. The test whether we
have heard it aright is whether we are prepared always to hear it anew, to ask for it
in every decision of life.44
It should be clear by now, then, that for Bultmann faith is never the act of an
autonomous human subject.45 It is not as Bultmanns critics have often alleged
simply a decision in which the individual freely authenticates his or her own
existence. To interpret Bultmanns thought in this way would be to overlook one of
the most characteristic features of his theology namely, the identification of faith
with obedience. According to Bultmann, no person is in control of his or her own
existence. One cannot, as in existentialist philosophy, simply authenticate ones
own existence through a free decision. Even to attempt such an autonomous act
would be a manifestation of the fallen drive to self-justification. Faith, in contrast, is
the antithesis of all such self-justifying works, and exposes the fact that human
40 Bultmann, Die Bedeutung des geschichtlichen Jesus, GuV, vol. 1, p. 212; ET Faith and
Understanding, p. 245.
41 Bultmann, Theology of the New Testament, vol. 1, p. 324.
42 Bultmann, Die Eschatologie des Johannes-Evangeliums, GuV, vol. 1, p. 151; ET Faith
and Understanding, p. 182.
43 Bultmann, Die Bedeutung des geschichtlichen Jesus, GuV, vol. 1, p. 212; ET Faith and
Understanding, p. 245.
44 Bultmann, How Does God Speak to Us through the Bible?, p. 169.
45 See also the incisive explication of Bultmann in Eberhard Jngel, Justification: The Heart
of the Christian Faith, trans. Jeffrey F. Cayzer (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 2001),
pp. 23842.
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28 Benjamin Myers
existence does not in fact stand under human control.46 For faith is not an
achievement but a gift.47 We receive faith freely from God, and in receiving it we
acknowledge that we have everything from God and nothing from ourselves.
In the movement of faith, therefore, we renounce all trust in ourselves and turn
to God with the whole of our existence. Faith is precisely our turning away from
ourselves, our surrendering all security, our renouncing any attempt to be acceptable,
to gain our life, to trust in ourselves, and our resolving to trust solely in God who
raises the dead.48 Trust in God is, in other words, radical submission to God. It is an
act in which, in response to Gods Word, our existence becomes wholly determined
by God himself.49
In all this, it is again clear that Bultmann does not view faith as any kind of
introspective, self-authenticating work. For he regards faith precisely as the
movement in which human beings turn away from themselves and towards God in
obedience.50 And in true obedience, the whole person is in what she does she is
not merely performing an obedient work, but with her whole being she is essentially
obedient.51 Obedience goes all the way down: that is Bultmanns doctrine of faith.
III
We are now in a position to consider the objection most frequently brought against
Bultmann namely, that self-understanding undermines the reality of God. Is
Gods revelation stripped of its reality if faith is viewed as self-understanding?
Is faith reduced to an act of pure subjectivity, detached from any reality outside the
human self? Does Bultmanns interpretation of faith replace the miraculous event of
revelation with a mere psychological event within ones own inner consciousness?
These are important questions, and they are questions of which Bultmann
himself was by no means unaware. In fact, Bultmann asks pointedly: [if] to speak
of God means to speak of our own personal existence, i.e., if faith is self-
understanding, does it not follow that Gods action is deprived of objective reality,
that it is reduced to a purely subjective, psychological experience (Erlebnis); that
God exists only as an inert event in the soul, whereas faith has real meaning only if
46 Rudolf Bultmann, Zur Frage der Christologie, GuV, vol. 1, p. 111; ET Faith and
Understanding, p. 142.
47 Bultmann, Die Bedeutung des geschichtlichen Jesus, GuV, vol. 1, p. 212; ET Faith and
Understanding, p. 245.
48 Rudolf Bultmann, New Testament and Mythology: The Problem of Demythologizing
the New Testament Proclamation, in New Testament and Mythology, p. 18.
49 Bultmann, Die Eschatologie des Johannes-Evangeliums, GuV, vol. 1, p. 137; ET Faith
and Understanding, p. 168.
50 Bultmann, Theology of the New Testament, vol. 1, p. 319.
51 Rudolf Bultmann, Jesus and the Word, trans. L.P. Smith and E.H. Lantero (New York:
Charles Scribners Sons, 1934), p. 61.
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Faith as Self-Understanding 29
God exists outside the believer?52 Bultmann claims that this objection rests on a
complete misunderstanding of the nature of faith: it rests on the assumption that faith
is a psychological occurrence within the soul. But Bultmanns own theological
anthropology radically undermines such a conception of faith. In his view, a human
being is above all a historical (geschichtlich) being, a being which is constituted in
its concrete encounters with others. Human existence is always already a being-
in-togetherness (Miteinandersein) with others, and apart from this togetherness any
notion of humanity would be a mere abstraction.53 Human beings thus exist only in
the living togetherness of I and Thou.54
If our humanness is understood in this way, it becomes impossible to think of
faith merely as a subjective or psychological event. For faith can exist only in the
context of a living encounter and that means, for Bultmann, encounter with
the Word of God. Faith is the event in which I hear Gods Word through scripture
as a word which is addressed to me, as kerygma, as a proclamation.55
Precisely at this point we can see why Bultmann lays so much emphasis on the
kerygmatic character of Gods Word. The Word of God can never be a set of general
doctrinal propositions, nor simply a word from the historical past; it must be a
concrete word of address which encounters me here and now in my own personal
existence. Such a kerygmatic word must be addressed to the hearer as a self.56
When Bultmann describes faith as response to the Word,57 he is therefore speaking
of a personal response in which the whole course of my existence becomes
determined by the Word that addresses me. Faith is, in other words, never merely a
general trust in God, still less a general feeling of existential dependence; it is rather
belief in a definite Word proclaimed to the believer and this Word is always and
only Jesus Christ himself.58 In faith I hear this Word, the personal summons of Jesus
Christ, and with my whole being I respond. If my response is explicitly articulated,
it will therefore necessarily take a christological form:
Christology is the Word of God. That which corresponds to the Word is faith
faiths new self-understanding is the response to the proclamation. And if
this faith this new self-understanding, this response to the address is
expressed in words, it will take the form of christology.59
The event in which I respond to the summons of the Word of God is thus neither
subjective nor objective, but christological, for it is nothing other than the event
of Jesus Christs own living reality, encountering me personally in the kerygma.
Responding to his critics, Bultmann thus insists that [f]rom the statement that to
speak of God is to speak of myself, it by no means follows that God is not outside the
believer60 so long as we think of God as being outside us not in the way an object
is outside a subject, but only in the way a Thou is outside an I in any given event
of personal address.
This means, on the one hand, that faith is not objective it cannot be objectively
observed or verified, since it is always an event which takes place right here and now
in my own concrete existence. But nor, on the other hand, is faith merely subjective
it emerges not from my inner self, but from a living encounter with the God who
addresses me in the gospel.
Bultmann uses ordinary personal relationships to illustrate this point. I
encounter the love of another person as an event in my own living history. Such love
cannot be verified through any objective psychological observation but nor is any
such objectivity required, since I perceive the reality of love directly as a determining
element of my being. Indeed, no one would suppose that a lack of objectivity here
undermined the reality of love; for love has its reality purely in the concrete
encounter in which I am addressed by it and respond to it.61 In just the same way,
Bultmann argues, the fact that we relate to God only in faith through personal
encounter does not mean that [God] does not exist apart from faith.62
On the basis of this understanding of faith, Bultmann can thus conclude that a
lack of objectivity is not a weakness of faith; it is its true strength.63 If we were to
speak objectively of God, we would need to place ourselves outside God, to view God
from a distance. But in this very act of objectification God would cease to be the
all-determining reality of our existence and that means God would cease to be
God. For if God is truly God, we can no more place ourselves alongside him than we
can step outside our own existence.64 Further, if faith were objectively demonstrable,
if the relationship between faith and God were simply the relationship of a subject to
an object, then God would in fact be reduced to the level of an empirical object in the
world; God would be placed on the same level as the world,65 and just so he would
cease to be God. These lines of argument make it strikingly clear that Bultmanns
intention all along has been to maintain the utter singularity and distinctiveness of the
reality of God. Indeed, it is only in order to affirm Gods reality that Bultmann so
emphatically denies Gods objectivity! It is in order to distinguish between God and
humanity that he so carefully seeks to correlate God and humanity.
In order to move beyond the subjectobject division and to express the
correlation between knowledge of God and knowledge of the self, Bultmann
thus defines faith as self-understanding. The pattern of thought involved here is
distinctively Lutheran in character, just as the whole of Bultmanns thought
is profoundly indebted to Lutheran conceptuality.66 It is a theological and
hermeneutical axiom of Luthers thought that faith and God belong together, so that
the knowledge of God and the knowledge of ourselves must unfold simultaneously
and must remain correlated. If we want to express what faith is, we must speak about
God. And if we want to say who God is, we must speak of faith.67 This is essentially
what Bultmann means when he says that to speak of God is to speak of myself.68
We have already seen that the connection between knowledge of God and self-
knowledge cannot be grasped within the traditional subjectobject schema. For if
God and humanity are separated as an object is from a subject, then both God and
humanity are reduced to mere abstractions. In Macquarries words: A purely
subjective and a purely objective understanding are alike abstractions from the
selfworld correlation which alone makes possible any understanding whatsoever.69
It is therefore only in a single act of self-understanding that we can grasp the reality
both of God and of ourselves. We grasp Gods reality in relation to ourselves and our
own existence in relation to God.
We can best appreciate Bultmanns meaning here by turning to the thought of
Gerhard Ebeling perhaps the greatest of Bultmanns pupils who has developed in
detail the notion of the inseparability of divine and human knowledge. According to
Ebeling, God and humanity are not two theological themes, but one. If we
separate God and humanity, we have misunderstood both, since each can be known
only in its relation to the other. Thus: There can be knowledge of God only if thereby
the human comes to know herself, and the human can have self-knowledge only if
thereby God is known.70
Conclusion
Does Bultmanns doctrine of faith undermine the reality of God, as Barth claimed
and as theologians since Barth continue to allege? Does it reduce theology to
anthropology, the event of revelation to a state of human consciousness? I have tried
in this exposition of Bultmanns thought to indicate how wide of the mark such
criticisms are, and to demonstrate that the typical Barthian critique of Bultmann in
fact rests on a strong misreading. Indeed, Bultmann has himself complained that this
line of criticism rests on nothing but [a] complete lack of understanding of his own
position.75 The preceding discussion has confirmed that this is indeed the case.
Still, this does not mean that one can feel entirely satisfied with Bultmanns
proposal. In particular, we may question Bultmanns claim that the language of
subject and object must under no circumstances be employed in theological
discourse. Is it true that such language is inevitably and necessarily objectifying?
May we not use the term object without thereby placing God at a distance and
reducing his being to a mere part of reality? Although Bultmanns penetrating
analysis and critique of objectification are legitimate and necessary, it seems clear
that the terminology of object may still be used in non-objectifying ways. Notably,
Barth has used the term to designate precisely the active transcendence of God
in relation to humanity, and the initiative with which God actively gathers us into
relation with himself; here the language of objectivity does not place our own
existence outside the reality of God, but it indicates that the God who is with us and
for us in Jesus Christ is always the Lord God is always already there ahead of us,
grasping us in the depths of our existence and so remaining beyond our grasp or
control.
Notwithstanding this terminological reservation, I am convinced that
Bultmanns doctrine of faith has a great deal to offer theology today. In the first
place, even if we retain the language of subject and object, we would do well to
heed Bultmanns warning about the dangers of objectifying God, of turning God into
a mere part of reality and thus into an idol. Perhaps the most egregious example of
this kind of objectification is a form of apologetics in which God is reduced to the
outcome of an experiment or the conclusion of an argument. Similarly, all attempts
to conceive of God as some kind of anthropological or cosmological necessity are
guilty of securing a place for God only by first stripping God of his grace and
freedom, that is, of his very deity. Bultmanns conception of self-understanding, with
its articulation of personal relatedness to God as the locus of all true knowledge of
God, offers a mode by which such forms of objectification may be resisted. In the
movement of faith, God is known in his relatedness to and differentiation from
humanity which is to say, God is known in the living reality of his true deity.
We might even venture the thesis that the fundamental theme of theology is the
distinction between God and humanity.76 At a time when much theology seems
calculated to erase precisely this distinction, Bultmann offers sharp insight into how
the Godhumanity distinction may be conceptualized and defended. According
to Bultmann, God and humanity are differentiated at the exact point of their
togetherness (Miteinander) namely, in the movement of faith which itself
corresponds to the event of Gods self-revelation in Jesus Christ. In other words, God
is distinguished from humanity precisely as the gracious God, the God who
addresses us and claims us in the gospel. This formulation which of course comes
very close to Barths understanding77 poses critical questions not only to overtly
objectifying theologies, but also to an ostensibly Barthian construal of the divine
freedom as sheer isolated autonomy over against the world.78 Paradoxically, while
such a conception aims to prevent the collapse of theology into anthropology,79 it
produces its own subtle collapse of the distinction between God and humanity, since
here Gods freedom functions as a projection of the post-Enlightenment autonomous
subject a subject whose relatedness to others is always set against the backdrop of
a much greater unrelatedness. In contrast, Bultmanns doctrine of faith offers a
resource for thinking the freedom and agency of the God of the gospel, the God
whose freedom has become an event in Jesus Christ, so that his distance from
humanity is solely and precisely the distance of grace.
Further, we can learn from Bultmann to speak of faith only as an act of the whole
person, an ever-new movement in which the whole self responds to the gracious
summons of the gospel. Once faith has been understood in this way, we will have put
behind us all superficial debates about whether faith is seated in the intellect or in
the will, or whether faith involves assent to specific propositional content. If faith is
a movement of the whole person, then it is pointless to ask whether it arises from any
particular location within the self, just as it is pointless to ask whether faith consists
in an objective set of beliefs which stands over against the self. For faith is nothing
other than the acting self, borne up by the divine address and transfigured in response
to that address. And just so, faith clearly involves specific content and knowledge,
even though it is never reducible to propositional content. Indeed, all attempts to
76 Here I am following Eberhard Jngel, for whom the distinction between God and
humanity is the central problem of dogmatic theology.
77 For Barth, the relation and differentiation of God and humanity have their locus in the
humanity of God. Formally speaking, this very different formulation is strikingly
similar to Bultmanns conception of faith: according to both Barth and Bultmann, God
and humanity can be properly distinguished only at the point of their togetherness and
this means, only in the event of Jesus Christ. Presumably a God who could be
distinguished from humanity in any other way would be a philosophical deity or a demon,
but not the gracious God and Father of Jesus Christ.
78 I am thinking here especially of Paul D. Molnar, Divine Freedom and the Doctrine of
the Immanent Trinity: In Dialogue with Karl Barth and Contemporary Theology
(London: T. & T. Clark, 2002).
79 Molnar, Divine Freedom and the Doctrine of the Immanent Trinity, p. 64.
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Faith as Self-Understanding 35
reduce faith to any isolated factor must be resisted, since such attempts contradict the
very nature of faith as an active movement of the whole self in response to God.
Finally, and most importantly, we can learn from Bultmann to take seriously the
christological structure of faith. As the locus of the divinehuman encounter, faith
corresponds precisely to the living event of Jesus Christ for Jesus Christ is himself
the event of Gods relatedness to and differentiation from humanity. That is why, for
Bultmann, the kerygma is of prime importance: in the word of proclamation, Jesus
Christ himself addresses us and becomes an event in our own historical existence.
Indeed, if we take seriously the christological structure of faith, may we not
perceive some truth even in Bultmanns radical correlation between faith and
resurrection? Certainly the reality of resurrection precedes faith and is much more
than faith but can it be anything less? And, on the other hand, can faith be anything
less than resurrection if it is indeed faith in God? For to believe in God is to be wholly
grasped, gathered up into living relation with Christ and his community and what
can this mean except life from the dead? In the words of the Fourth Gospel: he who
hears my word and has faith in him who sent me has eternal life he does not come
into judgment, but has passed from death to life.80
80 Jn 5:24.
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