1941

Bultmann: Kerygma and the Demythologization of the New Testament

In the essay "New Testament and Mythology" (1941) Bultmann raised the question of hermeneutics: the worldview of the New Testament – a "three-story" universe, angels, demons, miracles – is "mythological," and modern man, for whom the world is a closed chain of cause and effect, cannot accept it. Liberals such as Harnack removed the myth, reducing the gospel to ethical principles; Bultmann objected that together with the myth the kerygma would disappear, and proposed not to eliminate the myth but to interpret it existentially, as an expression of human self-understanding. Following Kähler, he concluded that what matters for faith is not the historical Jesus, about whom little can be known by means of form criticism, but the kerygma – the church's proclamation of Christ, through which the Word is addressed to every person. Bultmann regarded human existence as the link between the ancient text and the present, and existentialism, close to Heidegger, his colleague at Marburg, as the best starting point for understanding it. González notes the ambiguity of the concept of "myth"; critics reproached Bultmann for removing not so much myth as history and for making the modern worldview the norm.