The Theological Situation in Europe: Decline of the Bultmann Era?

First in a Series (Part I)

After ruling German theology for more than a decade, Rudolf Bultmann is no longer its king. Former students have usurped his throne and are scrambling for the spoils of conquest. While their loose-knit coalition of post-Bultmannian views tends as a whole to fragment Bultmann’s presuppositions, their own impact is blunted by internal disagreement.

In other quarters anti-Bultmannian forces are challenging existentialist theology with increasing vigor. European critics heading this anti-Bultmannian offensive include the traditionally conservative school, the Heilsgeschichte (salvation-history) movement, and the emerging “Pannenberg school.”

Third Time In A Century

For the third time in our century Continental Protestantism has tumbled into a morass of theological confusion and transition. Apprehension shadows almost all phases of current theological inquiry and reflection; what the final direction of the dogmatic drift will be is now wholly uncertain.

Contemporary European theology underwent its first major reconstruction when Karl Barth projected his crisis-theology in vigorous protest against classic post-Hegelian modernism. As a result, German theologians by the early 1930s were conceding the death of rationalistic liberalism, which Barth had repudiated as “heresy,” and admitting the triumph of dialectical theology over immanental philosophy. Barth’s Kirchenkampf role against Nazi Socialism, centering in his appeal to a transcendent “Word of God,” removed any doubt that theological leadership had fallen his way and gave him almost the status of a Protestant church father. Barthian theology accordingly remained the dominant force in European dogmatics until mid-century.

It was the appearance of the theological essays titled Kerygma und Mythos (Hans-Werner Bartsch, editor) that soon eroded the vast influence of Barth’s dogmatics. Published in 1948, this symposium included and made prominent Bultmann’s essay on “New Testament and Mythology,” a work which had but little recognition at its first appearance in 1941.

Barth’s early agreement with existentialism had been evident both from his broad dialectical refusal to ground Christian faith in the realm of objective history and knowledge and in the explicitly existential emphasis of his Römerbrief (1919). Bultmann conformed this existentialist commitment to several ruling ideas, namely, that Formgeschichte (the form-critical evaluation of New Testament sources) establishes what the primitive Church (rather than what Jesus) taught; that Christian faith requires no historical foundation beyond the mere “thatness” of Jesus’ existence; and finally that Christian relevance and acceptance in the modern scientific age require reinterpretation of the New Testament in terms of an existential non-miraculous pre-philosophy. In view of this “creeping naturalism,” Barth and Bultmann parted company between 1927 and 1929. In the 1932 revision of his Kirchliche Dogmatik Barth openly repudiated existential philosophy, and he has continually added “objectifying” elements in order to protect his dialectical theology against existentialist takeover.

At the same time, by dismissing modern scientific theory as irrelevant to Christian faith and relegating historical criticism to a role of secondary importance, Barth neglected pressing controversies in related fields of exegesis. Bultmann, on the other hand, assigned larger scope both to a naturalistic philosophy of science and to negative historical criticism, and demanded that the New Testament be “demythologized” of its miraculous content. The theology of divine confrontation, he contended, can and must dispense with such proofs and props. The young intellectuals became increasingly persuaded that Barth’s “theology of the Word of God” applied the basic dialectical principle less consistently than did Bultmann’s reconstruction. In fact, so extensive was their swing to Bultmannism on the seminary campuses that both Barth and Brunner had to concede that “Bultmann is king” (cf. “Has Winter Come Again? Theological Transition in Europe,” in CHRISTIANITY TODAY, NOV. 21, 1960, pp. 3 ff.).

The Stars Are Falling

The wide split in the Bultmann camp has now created a new strategic situation. The differences among the disciples of Bultmann signal an impending breakup of the total Bultmannian empire. Self-professed “followers” of Bultmann now range from those who regard interpersonal relations alone as significant for encountering God, to those who emphasize a necessary connection between the historical Jesus and the content of Christian faith. In his retirement, Bultmann has become but a symbolic ruler of the theological kingdom. Meantime an oligarchy of post-Bultmannians—many of them former students under Bultmann—has seized the intellectual initiative and is now best known for pointed criticisms of Bultmann and for sharp disagreements within its own ranks.

Says Ernst Fuchs of Marburg, “The vitality is now with Bultmann’s disciples who are in revolt, not with Bultmann and those who remain loyal.”

And Karl Barth of Basel, commenting on Time magazine’s recent statement that Bultmann still dominates European theology “the way the Russians dominate chess,” remarks, “That’s saying too much.” The Bultmann forces, he indicates, “are divided among themselves.” “And,” he adds, “Bultmann has become more or less silent.” As Emil Brunner of Zürich puts it, “Bultmann’s shaky throne gets more shaky day by day.”

Aware that a time of theological transition is again in process in which new views are constantly coming to the fore, scholars contemplate the future of Continental theology with mounting uncertainty.

“One of the tragedies of the theological scene today,” remarks the Erlangen New Testament scholar Gerhard Friedrich, “is that the theologians outlive the influence of their own theologies. Barth’s star has been sinking, and now Bultmann’s is sinking too.”

“The realm of systematic theology today suffers from a confusion of the frontiers of thought,” adds the Hamburg theologian Wenzel Lohff, because there is not yet “a new binding concept.”

And Brunner, whose encounter-theology held the line for a season between Barth and Bultmann, himself contends that “no one theology now on the scene can become the theology of the future. The Germans are monists—they want one leader at a time.”

Brunner concedes that for the moment Bultmann and Barth remain the strongest contenders for this leadership. And Heidelberg theologian Edmund Schlink believes that “in the field of systematic theology Barth still has more control, while in the New Testament field, it is Bultmann who holds more influence, although his positions are increasingly disputed and disowned.” “Barth has the vitality and he has disciples,” notes Fuchs, “whereas Bultmann has the a prioris and his disciples have the vitality—that is what distinguishes Bultmann’s situation from Barth’s. The real trouble is between Bultmann and his disciples.”

Commenting not simply on the vitality of the post-Bultmannians but also on the rivalry between them at the very moment when basic Bultmannian positions are under heavy fire, Schlink notes further: “The counter-criticism is growing, and the waves of demythology are diminishing.”

The Irreconcilable Divisions

In the eyes of Bultmann’s successor in New Testament at Marburg (since 1952), the Bultmannian school has “broken to pieces” during the past ten years. Long a foe of Bultmannism in its German seat of origin, Werner Georg Kümmel is currently president of Europe’s Society of New Testament Studies. As he sees the situation, Bultmannism is now irreconcilably split, and New Testament scholarship is divided into at least four competing camps:

1. The conservatives, including Otto Michel of Tübingen, Joachim Jeremias of Göttingen, Gustav Stählin of Mainz, Karl Heinrich Rengstorf of Münster, Leonhard Goppelt of Hamburg, and Gerhard Friedrich of Erlangen.

2. The Heilsgeschichte scholars, a mediating group to which Oscar Cullmann of Basel provides a kind of transition from the first category. Kümmel lists himself here, as well as Eduard Schweizer of Zürich, Eduard Lohse of Berlin, and Ulrich Wilckens of Berlin.

3. The post-Bultmannian scholars.

4. The so-called Pannenberg scholars. Led by Mainz theologian Wolfhardt Pannenberg, this school stresses the reality of objective divine revelation in history and the universal validity of the Christian truth-claim.

5. Independents whose viewpoints defy group identification. Helmut Thielicke of Hamburg, for example, combines liberal, dialectical, and conservative theological ingredients. Cullmann may be listed here also; he so modifies traditional views that he prefers not to be identified as a conservative. On the other hand, many Heilsgeschichte scholars brush aside his positions as too conservative. Ethelbert Stauffer of Erlangen is widely associated with a revival of radical liberalism in conservative garb.

Revolt In The Camp

Kümmel traces the death-knell of the Bultmannian school to Ernst Käsemann’s “revolutionary” paper of 1954 on the historical Jesus (“Das Problem des historischen Jesus”): “We cannot deny the identity of the exalted Lord with the incarnate Lord without falling into Docetism, and depriving ourselves of the possibility of distinguishing the Church’s Easter faith from a myth.” Since that time interest in the “happenedness” of something more than the mere existence of Jesus has advanced until most of Bultmann’s disciples have come to insist for both theological and historical reasons that some knowledge of the historical Jesus is indispensable. As a result, dialogue was inevitable with such New Testament scholars as Cullmann, Michel, Jeremias, Kümmel, Goppelt, and Stauffer, who had never been uninterested in the historical Jesus and who opposed Bultmann’s theology for a variety of other reasons as well.

Not only Bultmann but also Barth deplored this revival of interest in the historical Jesus. In his report, “How My Mind Has Changed,” Barth voiced strong suspicions of “the authoritative New Testament men, who to my amazement have armed themselves with swords and staves, and once again undertaken the search for the ‘historical Jesus’—a search in which I now as before prefer not to participate” (The Christian Century, Jan. 20, 1960, p. 75).

Nonetheless the historical Jesus became an increasing concern of Bultmann’s former students—including Fuchs of Marburg, Ebeling of Zürich, Bornkamm of Heidelberg, if not of almost the entire Bultmannian school. Only a minority resisted this historical interest—former Bultmann students like Hans Conzelmann of Göttingen, Philipp Vielhauer of Bonn, Manfred Mezger of Mainz, and, on the American side, James M. Robinson of Claremont.

Bultmann himself helped to create the popular distinction between “genuine” and “spurious” disciples of Bultmannism by commending the theological consequences of Herbert Braun’s views. Together with Mezger, his faculty colleague, Braun stresses interpersonal relationships alone as decisive for divine revelation. Although both “genuine” and “spurious” groups retain Bultmann’s emphasis that the task of exegesis is existential interpretation, the genuine disciples renounce a basic interest in the historical Jesus, while the spurious promote this interest.

Käsemann of Tübingen is the most disaffected member of the Bultmann school; in fact, some observers put him in a class by himself. He speaks of his former teacher as “a man of the nineteenth century” and tells classes that when the Marburg scholar substitutes existential interpretation for New Testament tradition he is simply “looking at his own navel.” With an eye on Bultmann’s “Eschatology and History,” he charges that Bultmann’s theology is no longer Christian. Käsemann repudiates Bultmann’s anthropological emphasis. He denies also the existential exegesis which Fuchs and Ebeling retain alongside their stress of the importance of the historical Jesus for faith. Although Käsemann sees no sure way to go behind the Gospels to the historical Jesus, he recognizes the difficulty of the form-critical method, namely, that it cannot tell either where Jesus speaks or where the Church speaks. He resumes some of the basic emphases of conservative New Testament scholars—for example, the Jewish rather than Hellenic background of the New Testament (“all Torah must be fulfilled”)—and shows interest in New Testament apocalyptic. For Käsemann what is central for primitive Christian preaching is not the believing subject (as with Bultmann) but the interpretation of the eschatological teaching with its anticipation of final fulfillment: God sent his Son, and this has apocalyptic significance. The Jesusbild of Matthew’s Gospel is eo ipso the historical Jesus. It is equally significant that the problem of Heilsgeschichte—of the meaning of certain acts of God for proclamation—again comes into the foreground. In his deviation from Bultmann’s methodology at the point of emphasis on the New Testament as the proclamation of an apocalyptic happening, Käsemann occupies a position between most of the post-Bultmannian scholars and the non-Bultmannian “history of salvation” scholars. It is this exegetical turn which accounts for the fact that in New Testament discussion today the most lively theological encounter is occurring between the “moderately” critical Heilsgeschichte scholars and the most energetic critics of Bultmann in his own camp.

Except for a very small colony of “genuine” Bultmannians, most of Bultmann’s former students and disciples now modify or reject his emphasis that “the preached Jesus” is the ground of community between God and men. Fuchs and Ebeling seek to correlate the philosophical side of Bultmann’s position with some of Luther’s motifs as a corrective. Their conviction that the basis of community between God and men is the historical Jesus means, further, that the historical Jesus is the One who must be preached. “The historical Jesus—not the preached Jesus—is the one theme of the New Testament,” insists Fuchs. Bultmann’s failure to say this, he adds, is “the cause of the trouble among his disciples, and is a serious error.”

The Mainz Radicals

Eyeing the elements of ambiguity in Bultmann’s presentation, Fuchs observes: “Where Bultmann stands sometimes only God knows and not even Bultmann.” Confusion over Bultmann’s position grew apace when he approved the consequences of the theology of Herbert Braun and Manfred Mezger, the so-called “Mainz radicals,” who stay with “the kerygmatic Christ” and do not revive the quest for the historical Jesus. (See “Das Verhältnis der urchristlichen Christusbotschaft zum historischen Jesus,” a lecture at Heidelberg Academy of Sciences in which Bultmann replied to scholars reviving the quest for the historical Jesus. The English translation appears in The Historical Jesus and the Kerygmatic Christ, Carl L. Braaten and Roy A Harrisville, editors, New York: Abingdon Press, 1964. Note Bultmann’s remark: “It may be that Herbert Braun’s intention to give an existential interpretation has been carried out most consistently,” pp. 35 ff.).

These Mainz theologians (Mezger is a former student of Bultmann; Braun, a friend) consider themselves—rightly or wrongly—the heirs of the dialectical theology, and carry Bultmann’s position to greater extremes than do other Bultmannian disciples. They question the possibility of speaking of God as a being independent and distinguishable from the world and man. From the Incarnation Mezger concludes that God is not an exceptional reality but a totally profane reality, and that all facts and acts of faith must be encountered in our world in personal relationships. Mezger defines God as the Unobjectifiable and Unutilizable who encounters us always and only through our neighbor. Revelation for Mezger is the Word that meets me unconditionally, so that I can only trust or reject. Braun, too, insists that revelation shows itself “only where and when I am struck by it.”

But despite his approving references to the results of Braun’s theology (most recently in “Der Gottesgedanke und der moderne Mensch,” Zeitschrift für Theologie und Kirche, December, 1963, pp. 335–48, reprint of an article which appeared first in the daily newspaper Die Welt under the title “Ist Gott Tod?”) Bultmann considers some formulations of his Mainz disciples as objectionable and dangerous insofar as they leave in doubt the reality of God. Bultmann distinguishes reality and objectivity; he denies that God is knowable objectively, insists that revelation occurs only in decision and that God always confronts us when there is revelation. “If Mezger and Braun depict revelation as occurring in personal relationships and dispense with the reality as well as with the objectivity of God, they are in error,” he says. “I will not dissolve the faith in revelation into subjectivism. The danger of Braun’s formulations is that he seems to do so, although I do not believe he intends this.”

The irony of the situation is that Bultmann’s criticism of the “Mainz radicals” is not dissimilar from Emil Brunner’s criticism of some of Bultmann’s own recent formulations. “The concept of revelation has been a dispensable luxury in Bultmann’s scheme,” Brunner remarks, pointing to Bultmann’s delineation of God as the transcendent in the immanent, the unconditional in the conditional. Brunner continues, “Only the idea of God which seeks and finds the unconditioned in the conditioned, the other-worldly in the this-worldly, the transcendent in the present reality, is acceptable to modern man” (“Der Gottesgedanke und der moderne Mensch,” ibid., pp. 346 ff.). “Bultmann is a modern Origen,” says Brunner, “an allegorist of the Alexandrine school. Bultmann has always been a student of Heidegger, who transforms the New Testament for him. Heidegger is an avowed atheist; he bows to no revelation—understands none, needs none, allows none. He smiles at Bultmann for ‘making theology out of my philosophy.’ ”

Have something to add about this? See something we missed? Share your feedback here.